DISCOVERY 



A MONTHLY POPULAR 

 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE 



Vol. II, No. 20. AUGUST 1921. 



PRICE Is. NET. 



A Monthly Popular Journal of Know- 



DISCOVERY. 



ledge. 



Edited by Edward Liveing, B.A;, Rotherstliorpe. 

 Northampton, to whom all Editorial Communications 

 should be addressed. (Dr. A. S. Russell continues to 

 act as Scientific Adviser.) 



Published by John Murray, 50A Albemarle Street, 

 London, W.i, to whom all Business Communications 

 should be addressed. 



Advertisement Office : 16 Regent Street, London, 

 S.W.I. 



.\nnual Subscription, 12s. 6d. post free ; single numbers, 

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Binding cases for Vol. I, 1920, are now ready. Price 

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Editorial Notes 



The first duty of the new editor of Discovery is to 

 pay a cordial tribute to the skill and driving-power of 

 his predecessor. Under Dr. Russell's guidance, during 

 the nineteen months since its inauguration, this journal 

 has supplied, with a steadily increasing range of infor- 

 mation, a demand for knowledge in the wide field of 

 the Arts and Sciences that has never before been known 

 in this country. His successor is in the happy position 

 of being able to build on firm foundations laid by him 

 and by that group of intellectual men who conceived 

 and put into being the idea of such a journal. 



That Discovery has before it all the opportunities 

 for a high career there is no doubt ; there would be no 

 doubt even without the sohd success which it has already 

 attained. The present times show many points of re- 

 semblance to that sudden revival of learning and that 

 quickening of national and indi%'idual imagination 

 which coursed through Europe in the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries. But, whereas that Renaissance was 

 confined only to the more wealthy and powerful classes 



and the intellegentsia of Europe, the spirit of our own 



age is affecting all classes of our social complex. Signs 



of this new spirit were not wanting before the war ; but, 



if the war did not create it, it matured its growth in 



remarkable fashion. It is a restless spirit ; it questions 



the value of existing social and international conditions, 



and of many ethical and religious doctrines placidly 



accepted by the Victorian millions ; it asks for more 



definite and accurate knowledge of scientific discoveries, 



and movements in art, literature, and philosophy 



than is given to it by the daily Press. It is a spirit 



which thirsts for education, and whose thirst must be 



satisfied. 



* * * « * 



These remarks do not refer to any single class. 

 Bagehot, the economist and historian, writing over 

 sixty years ago, declared that there were not more than 

 10,000 well-educated persons in Great Britain. WTiat 

 he meant by this statement was that there were not 

 more than 10,000 persons who possessed a sufficient 

 store of knowledge to enable them to think accurately 

 and to think for themselves. If we had to compute the 

 number of present-day educated people by this stand- 

 ard, should we be far wrong in multiplying the above 

 quantity by so small a figure as five ? Such a number 

 would by no means be drawn only from the upper and 

 upper middle classes. 



***** 



But the truth is that most of us are at least striving 

 to be well-educated. The war had this effect upon us : 

 those of us who were of military age it released to a 

 period of action, of intense emotion, of experiences in 

 foreign countries ; those who were not of military age 

 it taught how to take up work of a different nature 

 from that to which the}' had been accustomed, it gave 

 them a new career and shifted the currents of their 

 lives in middle age, or it left them, in prolonged periods 

 of comparative solitude and of anxiety, to their own 

 thoughts. But all of us had to live or to think beyond 

 the horizons of our offices, our workshops, or our 

 villages ; and this has left its mark upon us. 



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