INDIAN NATIONAL LIFE 93 



tion of your teachers, give them facilities for introducing 

 a really humane and human scientific teaching, which at 

 present, I am bound to say, I do not think exists. I have 

 no desire to be censorious. I know that science is still new 

 in this country. But I cannot help thinking that a great 

 deal of the science that is being taught at the present time 

 is of a kind which will not produce the specialist and yet 

 will not imbue the person who receives it with the real notion 

 of what the relation of science is to national life. The thing 

 that I believe most essential for you I do not wish to make 

 it too personal, because it is also true of our own country 

 to a large extent, but it is perhaps more urgently true here 

 is to disseminate the notion of what the potentialities of 

 science really are. 



There is much else connected with science that I should 

 have liked to talk about. There is a philosophical side, and 

 there is the ethical side of science. There is still a tendency 

 to look upon science as a subject that has its dangers. It 

 is apt to be regarded as what we call a bread-and-butter 

 study, a study that lays too much stress upon the material 

 aims of life ; one that by its discipline damages the capacity 

 of a human being for appreciating the value of some of the 

 things that are best and highest in life. I have no time to 

 enter upon a defence of science in this respect. I can do no 

 better than once again refer you to the life of Pasteur. No 

 book that I know of will give you a better idea of what 

 science, properly regarded, is in relation to things, not only 

 material, but to things philosophical and things spiritual, 

 and I think if you read that book you will see that science 

 properly regarded may be acquitted of the charges that are 

 so often laid at its door. I have given you a very imperfect 

 plea for science, and a very imperfect account of its true 

 relation to national life. I do ardently believe in science, 

 and I need hardly say I do ardently believe in the necessity 



