THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN ENGLAND. 239 



sides a number of separate societies, "concentration was 

 needed in one association in order to give more systematic 

 direction to scientific inquiry, and that the first thing 

 needed would be to procure reports on the state and the 

 desiderata of the several branches of science." Babbage, 

 at the Oxford meeting in 1832, "expressed the general 

 feeling that meetings should be held in places likely to 

 bring science into contact with that practical knowledge 

 on which the wealth of the country depends." There is 

 also no doubt that in the course of half a century the 

 British Association has done a very extensive service 

 to science in the direction of supplying the wants which 

 its early founders clearly defined, and in bringing about 

 that concerted action and scientific co-operation which so 

 highly distinguishes the great academies and universities of 

 France and Germany.^ It has done so without altogether 

 destroying that peculiar feature which characterises not lo. 



^ ^ ^ Charactei 



only the scientific but all the forms of the higher mental j^^.t'cs of 



'' o higher ini 



work of this country. In no country has the voice of EngYa^nd. 

 public criticism been so free to unveil the shortcomings 

 which attach to all even the highest human effort. In 

 England there has existed for a long time the habit of 

 promoting advance in every department by the cultiva- 



Babbage, Henry, Barlow, South, association of our nobility, clergy, 



Faraday, Murdoch, and Cliristie ; gentry, and jihilosophers" (p. 342). 



nor need we have any hesitation ^ The British Association has from 



in adding that within the last fif- the beginning had two features which 



teen years not a single discovery or did not exist in the German su- 



invention of prominent interest has ciety first, the Reports on the 



been made in our colleges, and that position of various branches of sci- 



there is not one man in all the eight [ ence, delivered by specialists of the 



universities of Great Britain who is j highest ability ; and, secondly, the 



at present known to be engaged in , Committees, which undertake to 



any train of original research " do special work requiring concerted 



(' Quarterly Review,' vol. xliii. p. action. 



327, 1830). He then suggests "an I 



