32 PROFESSORS AND PRACTICAL MEN 



industrial fruits of scientific knowledge have long been recog- 

 nized ? True again, most palpably true ; but how the fruit 

 is related to the knowledge, how the seed is sown, how it is 

 tended, what should be done to nurture the plant, that is not 

 known. It is not known because your educational system 

 did not achieve this one thing for the community it did not 

 put its victims for a single occasion in their lives in the 

 position of asking a simple scientific question, and of faithfully 

 finding the answer by experiment. 



Now the portion of knowledge which most completely 

 and most vitally interpenetrates our manufactures is Natural 

 Science ; and it has been, I think, an incalculable disadvantage 

 that while these manufactures were advancing by leaps and 

 bounds during the century succeeding the industrial revolution 

 (which I suppose may be dated about 1760), there was no 

 movement in the educational world for a general dissemination 

 of scientific knowledge and skill. During this period, several 

 misconceptions took deep root in the English mind. The 

 achievements of Arkwright the barber, Hargreaves the weaver, 

 Crompton the farmer, Watt the instrument maker, Cartwright 

 the clergyman, Stephenson the fireman, Murdoch the mill- 

 wright, and of all that illustrious group their great and funda- 

 mental achievements created an overwhelming belief that the 

 self-taught inventor was destined to be the only important 

 pioneer in industrial discovery ; and to this day a young man 

 brought up on a diet of grammar and Samuel Smiles might 

 well despair of contributing anything of moment to the service 

 of industry, unless indeed he happened to be exceptionally 

 poor and to have attended no more showy a place of education 

 than a night school. 



If the universities had set themselves to send a current of 

 science through our schools at the time when the direct utility 

 of scientific knowledge and of Scientific method was becoming 

 demonstrable in the industrial world, we should, I think, be 



