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 



