58 SCIENCE AND THE STATE 



It is low ground to plead for fair play to science. 

 It is the ground of the hymn 



" O Lord, we know that all we give 

 Will be a thousand times repaid." 



I suppose most of my hearers, like myself, have 

 outgrown many of their rooted convictions of two 

 years ago many times. Great changes have come 

 over all of us, and greater will come, perhaps, when 

 the full tide of our manhood, who have sacrificed all 

 they had and sunk their individual interests and 

 aspirations in the general social weal, returns. The 

 particular faith in me that has undergone eclipse 

 at the moment is a faith in democracy, and if an 

 aristocracy of intelligence were practical, I am afraid 

 I should vote for it. 



The one problem that it seems to me has not 

 been solved by this democracy, if it is a democracy, 

 is that of finding each man his proper life-work and 

 then letting him do it ; and, until it is solved, the 

 complex organism that the modern State is, must 

 remain a heterogeneous collection of individuals rather 

 than a community. Perhaps it is that two of a trade 

 seldom agree, but I have never been wildly enthusi- 

 astic of German science. I admire it, of course, as 

 much as any, but what I mean is that I never have 

 believed that, compared with that of the rest of the 

 scientific world, it was at all pre-eminent. Germany is 

 not a democracy, and I have no love for her political 

 system. But it is indisputable that Germany uses 

 her people to infinitely better advantage than we do, 

 and that there is in the State a power of finding, for 

 the infinitely complex and varied needs of a modern 

 nation, the infinitely complex and varied individuals 

 necessary each for their particular job. Here we 

 delight in racing cart-horses and leaving Derby 

 winners to haul coal. 



