28 PROFESSORS AND PRACTICAL MEN 



continuous flow of the most highly trained purely scientific 

 chemists from the universities to the works. I found likewise 

 that, in other industries to which chemistry is applicable, there 

 was a similar demand for scientific brains, and that in Germany 

 as a whole there was a well-established understanding between 

 science and industry very different from anything I knew of in 

 my own country. 



You are no doubt familiar with all this ; you have heard it 

 before again and again. I repeat it in order to show you how 

 natural it is that English men of science, who have had 

 experience of the system of things in Germany, should be pro- 

 foundly impressed by its value to the nation. It is not 

 surprising that they should loudly proclaim its excellence and 

 commend it to their own countrymen. Yet it is very easy for 

 people who are imbued by an enthusiasm for something dis- 

 covered abroad, to forget two things first, that transplantation 

 is sometimes as difficult and as disastrous for political and 

 educational systems as it is for living things. And, again, we 

 are very apt in some circumstances to forget, or under-rate, the 

 excellencies of our own peculiar possessions. When we arq 

 among the snowy peaks of Switzerland, or in the lazy sunshine 

 of a southern sea, we may do scant justice to the quiet beauty 

 of an English landscape or to the invigorating spirit of our 

 stormy island shores. I am sure that, among the class to which 

 I belong, there is a danger of under- estimating the deep-seated 

 powers of Englishmen ; of neglecting the true genius of our 

 countrymen ; and, in short, of falling into a narrow-mindedness 

 which tends to put us out of sympathy with the people we 

 desire to serve. I think that no one who has studied the history 

 of our industrial development, or has moved observantly among 

 our industrial community, can have failed to be impressed by 

 the great native capacity of the Englishman for practical affairs. 

 The quality is one exceedingly difficult to define. It is very 

 elusive ; but it is there this power of doing things a power 



