PROFESSORS AND PRACTICAL MEN 27 
things that pass in and out of the stores department of a rail- 
way, while I was still quite ignorant of the science of chemistry. 
During all this period, I was constantly associated with all 
kinds of what are called practical men; and the whole burden 
of that experience was to impress me, when a boy, with the 
belief that efficiency in the real business of the world bore no 
perceptible relationship to the processes called education as 
carried out in schools and colleges. Well-educated men 
seemed to be men who were interested in reading books in 
their leisure, or who talked in an interesting way about things 
outside their business. Sometimes they appeared in the form 
of mad inventors, whose futile designs were exposed with con- 
siderable triumph by my father. _ 
Now I believe this stage of development, or, rather, its 
opinions, are those which, if they would but own it, a vast 
proportion of the people of this country hold at the present 
day ; and I myself believe that they are not wholly devoid of 
foundation, It is undeniable that extraordinary practical 
success is sometimes attainable, in both manufacture and com- 
merce, by men who have had almost nothing of what is 
conventionally called education ; and these men are the hardest 
facts that we, who preach education, have to reckon with. But 
I will return to this subject later. 
In my own case, after the period I have referred to, I under- 
went a long university training in this country and abroad, 
and committed myself eagerly to the academic career which I 
have since followed. The science of chemistry, as you are 
well aware, has played an extraordinary part in the develop- 
ment of industry during last century. There is hardly a branch 
of manufacture that has been untouched by it; but the most 
conspicuous example has been the creation of the wonderful 
industry based on the elaboration of the compounds contained 
in coal tar. When I was a student in Germany, this industry 
was in the full tide of development; and I witnessed the 
