July 5, 1900] 



NA TURE 



225 



How could it possibly do any good when there was such 

 a spirit of unbelief among such people ? We must 

 create in England what already exists in Germany and 

 France, and to some extent in America — a belief in the 

 importance of scientific training everywhere. At present 

 there is utter unbelief, and it is due to a bad system of 

 education, which keeps everybody out of sympathy with 

 everything scientific. It is terrible to hear our designers 

 of bridges and steam engines and dynamos and great 

 engineering schemes laugh at science and calculation, 

 especially when one knows that foreign engineers are 

 sneering at our best men ; but it is well to know that, 

 in spite of their laughter, our engineers are doing their 

 very best to make use of all the true science that they 

 have ever learnt ; it is like gold leaf^very thin, but it 

 serves a useful purpose. What they see clearly is the 

 uselessness to God or man of such a so-called scientific 

 traming as they themselves had ; they do not dream 

 that there is a real scientific training possible by which 

 useful mathematical and other weapons for solving all 

 sorts of practical problems, handy to use and always 

 ready, may become part of the mental machinery of the 

 average man. 



Four hundred years ago, reading, writing and cypher- 

 mg were taught badly, and practical men looked upon 

 them as things good to forget, things good for priests. If 

 a layman could read or write, he was probably a useless 

 person who, because he could not do well otherwise, took 

 to learning. What a man learnt was clumsily learnt ; if 

 he learnt much, he was fit for nothing but learning ; 

 usually he learnt little with great labour, and made no use 

 of it , therefore reading, writing and cyphering seemed 

 useless. Do they seem now so very useless ; now that 

 everybody can learn them fairly easily ? It is not so easy 

 now to say that a man is useless merely because he can 

 read, write or cypher. When I was an apprentice, and no 

 doubt it is much the same now, if an apprentice was a 

 poor workman with his hands, he often took to some kind 

 of study, which he called science. In fact, science got to 

 be the sign of a bad workman. But if workmen were so 

 taught at school that they all really knew a little science, 

 science would no longer be laughed at. When a civil 

 engineer or electrical engineer fails because he has no 

 business habits, he takes to calculation and the reading 

 of so-called scientific books, because it is very easy to 

 get up a reputation for science. The man is a bad 

 engineer in spite of his science, but people get to think 

 that he is an unpractical engineer because of his scientific 

 knowledge. 



Germany has an enormous advantage just now in this, 

 that all thinking Germans, all influential men, believe that 

 their great success in commerce and manufacture has 

 come through physical science. Every manager and 

 foreman, every captain of any kind of industry in Germany 

 and Switzerland, has passed with honour through the 

 science classes of a great technical school. The money 

 that used to flow towards religious institutions now finds 

 its way towards the greater and greater development of 

 scientific education, so that Germany is getting covered 

 with universities of science. 



The open-hearth process has enabled German ores of 

 iron to be used in steel manufacture. The war-earthquakes 

 have stirred up the German people to new life, have pro- 

 duced enthusiasm, and made all kinds of ambition respect- 

 able. Any one who knew such a tumble-down, poverty- 

 stricken town as Hanover forty years ago would not 

 recognise it now. There are miles of streets of the brightest 

 shops in Europe ; at anytime of the day or night one can 

 read a small print newspaper in these streets ; the streets 

 throng with traffic, and the electric tram-cars have ex- 

 tended the city far into the country ; and so it is in 

 hundreds of towns, and manufactures flourish in thousands 

 of places where the hare and partridge used to have the 

 scenery to themselves. I do not think that the progress of 



NO. I 60 1, VOL. 62] 



Germany would have been half so rapid had it not been 

 for the scientific education of the German leaders, but it is 

 absurd to say that all this progress is due to science. The 

 fact is that the whole world is developing its natural re- 

 sources. England had the start ; every country that has 

 coal and iron, or their equivalents, is competing with 

 England. The countries of greatest natural resources 

 can afford to neglect their scientific education longer than 

 others ; but, sooner or later, knowledge and method and 

 character must tell. If countries are equal in their natural 

 advantages, victory must remain with that one in which 

 there is the best education. 



I have hitherto been reviling only the higher education 

 in England. Until quite recently there was no primary 

 education to revile. Let me put before my readers a true 

 contrast. In Scotland, at any time during the last loo 

 years and more, if in the very poorest parish there was a 

 boy of promise, a boy who showed a fondness for reading, 

 for learning, for taking in what then and now goes under 

 the name of education, a fondness for coming into con- 

 tact with great minds through books— the success of that 

 boy in life was . absolutely sure. However poor his 

 parents might be, however remote his humble home 

 might be from civilisation, he was sent to the university, 

 and got his chance. His nation gloried in his success, 

 even if his own poor country had to be left by him for the 

 richer field of England. Of all the great doctors and 

 ministers and scholars of Scotch blood now to be found in 

 London, only a very few can say that they were not ex- 

 ceedingly poor in their youth. Now contrast such a boy's 

 chances with those of a clever English boy some years 

 ago. Why, until the ever-to-be-praised Science and Art 

 Department gave him a chance, a poor English boy, 

 however promising, was compelled to eat his heart out in 

 unavailing regret, was taught that it was a sin to think of 

 bettering his condition, was taught that a decent educa- 

 tion was as remote for him as for the cattle he tended. 



I believe that this difference was due to the fact that in 

 Scotland everybody thinks well of a good education, of 

 knowledge, of mental power, because he himself can 

 think, whereas in England education is looked upon with 

 contempt, because there is not one labourer in a thousand 

 who can think. 



I do firmly believe that the Prince Consort saved this 

 nation from utter defeat, and that if we are not yet to be 

 defeated we must do as he would have continued to tell 

 us to do. Had he lived till now, this country would not 

 merely have the beginnings of a development of art and 

 science ; it would be covered with educational institutions 

 whose most important object would be scientific study, 

 a secondary leaning to literature not being neglected. 

 As it is, we have the merest dust of his mind expanded 

 into a wonderful Science and .A.rt Department, which is 

 criticised adversely only by the very ignorant or the very 

 prejudiced. Only people like myself, whose whole life 

 has been a paean of gratitude for what that department 

 has done for me and mine, who have seen in thousands 

 of cases that it has redeemed otherwise wasted lives 

 with enormous benefit to our industries, are really in a 

 position to imagine how much that great man might 

 have done for us if he had lived. 



For one thing, just as the Science and Art Depart- 

 ment is the envy and admiration of foreigners ; just as 

 it is an English institution, made to fit England and no 

 other country, so he would have developed scientific 

 education in England on lines utterly different from the 

 soul-destroying system of Germany or its imitation in 

 America. 



Consider a scientific German as you know him. Say 

 that he is twenty-three or twenty-five years of age, and 

 he is about to enter business. From the age of seven 

 or less he has trudged to school, perhaps at 7 o'clock in 

 the morning, with a bag of books of half his own weight. 

 He had a short interval for dinner, and went on to 



