GERMAN SCIENCE 119 



much has been written, in comparison with which any words 

 of mine must sink into insignificance. It is the fashion to 

 pretend that the belief exists no longer. Science, it is said, 

 has gained the day ; it is the modern study ; it is the one 

 towards which money is most freely devoted. This is only 

 partly true. The support that science has received in these 

 later times is, I am afraid, not in the wide sense disinterested. 

 It is believed that science pays. And so it does, and so it 

 may be commended. As citizens of a country that we desire 

 shall survive, we who pursue science are anxious enough that 

 it shall be known to pay. But we want much more than that. 

 We want science to be appreciated for its own sake. And I 

 boldly say, it is not so appreciated by any manner of means. 

 I say it is distrusted. If you ask for proof, I might reply 

 that it lies in the constant experience of my life. If you insist 

 upon a sample, here is one. At the conclusion of a very able 

 article appearing not long ago in a newspaper on the subject 

 of London University, we find the following : 



* The report is a masterly production, and if we disagree 

 with it on the points indicated, it must be admitted that it 

 errs in conformity with a tendency characteristic of the age 

 the tendency to close unrecognized doors, straighten roads and 

 regulate everything in a " scientific " spirit a tendency which 

 may ultimately have very much to answer for.' 



The word scientific is in inverted commas. That I take to 

 mean that it is not used in the right sense, as The Times puts 

 General in inverted commas when it speaks of * General ' Booth. 



Please understand that I do not quarrel with what I have 

 quoted. On the contrary, I believe it is entirely in harmony 

 with my own view namely, that the common and wrong 

 idea of science is that of something rigid, mechanical, un- 

 imaginative, and something cramping to the human spirit. 

 Science may be this if it is misconceived and misused ; it may 

 tend to make a man or a nation narrow and one-sided, blind 

 to other things as great as or greater than itself. But so, 



