2 SCIENCE AND CULTURE. [LECT. 



chief discovery. The kindly heart would be moved, 

 the high sense of social duty would be satisfied, by 

 the spectacle of well-earned wealth, neither squandered 

 in tawdry luxury and vainglorious show, nor scattered 

 with the careless charity which blesses neither him 

 that gives nor him that takes, but expended in the 

 execution of a well-considered plan for the aid of 

 present and future generations of those who are willing 

 to help themselves. 



We shall all be of one mind thus far. But it is 

 needful to share Priestley's keen interest in physical 

 science ; and to have learned, as he had learned, the 

 value of scientific training in fields of inquiry appa- 

 rently far remote from physical science ; in order to 

 appreciate, as he would have appreciated, the value 

 of the noble gift which Sir Josiah Mason has bestowed 

 upon the inhabitants of the Midland district. 



For us children of the nineteenth century, however, 

 the establishment of a college under the conditions of 

 Sir Josiah Mason's Trust, has a significance apart from 

 any which it could have possessed a hundred years 

 ago. It appears to be an indication that we are reach- 

 ing the crisis of the battle, or rather of the long series 

 of battles, which have been fought over education in 

 a campaign which began long before Priestley's time, 

 and will probably not be finished just yet. 



In the last century, the combatants were the 

 champions of ancient literature, on the one side, and 

 those of modern literature on the other; but, some 

 thirty years 1 ago, the contest became complicated by 



1 The advocacy of the introduction of physical science into general 



