280 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



44. 

 Changes 

 during the 

 last fifty 

 years. 



honours and championships in all the noble and ignoble 

 forms of racing, where much energy, which might more 

 usefully have been merged in co-operative action, is 

 sacrificed for the sake of individual distinction. But 

 where the height of genius forbids emulation, where the 

 towering intellect has distanced all records, this indi- 

 vidualism has produced single specimens of the greatest 

 work, examples of the highest moral worth. It is not in 

 the courses of scientific work alone that we shall have 

 occasion to mark the peculiarity of British, especially of 

 English, thought ; but it is interesting to note how even 

 in this sphere, which more than any other seems to bear 

 an international and cosmopolitan character, the genius 

 of the nation strongly asserts itself, baffling every effort 

 to control it or to lead it into more conventional chan- 

 nels. The last fifty years have done much to destroy 

 the peculiarly national customs, the idiosyncrasies of the 

 different peoples. English institutions have been copied 

 in France, and German customs introduced into England ; 

 it has recently been stated that the older type of scientific 

 amateur which existed in this country is dying out, being 

 rendered impossible by the more complicated machinery 

 of science, the manifold conditions on which progress de- 

 pends. It seems to me doubtful whether this view is 

 correct. Surely the advance of the highest kind of 

 thought will always depend upon the unfettered devel- 

 opment of the individual mind, regardless of established 

 habits, of existing forms of expression, or of adopted 

 systems ; just as the diffusion and wholesale application of 

 single discoveries will depend on a ready and efficient ma- 

 chinery and organisation ; whilst their influence on gen- 



