July 4, 1901] 



NA TURE 



in the modern world, but it is most unfortunately true 

 that the men placed by the people at the heads of the 

 Government departments are sadly wanting in a know- 

 ledge of science, and are, as a result, almost indifferent 

 to its interests. Indeed, at the hands of the typical 

 English Government official the profession of scientific 

 education shares with science itself the results of this 

 indifference. There is unquestionably a marked want 

 of sympathy on the part of our Government officials 

 with all those whose business it is to spread scientific 

 knowledge among the people. What is the cause of 

 this? The simple and direct answer is — the public 

 schools. These institutions — some of them venerable 

 as to age, all of them venerable as to ideas — supply 

 almost exclusively the professional politicians to whose 

 care the interests of the great departments of the Govern- 

 ment are committed, and in all of them the dominant 

 educational ideals are classical and mediaeval The 

 career of the Enghsh professional politician is fairly well 

 stereotyped. A classical education at one of the fashion- 

 able public schools, followed by something very similar 

 at an ancient University, accompanied probably by the 

 pursuit of some branch of athletics, and almost certainly 

 by a continuous neglect of all branches of science, is the 

 typical training of the heads of English officialdom. 

 Neither science nor those whose profession is the teach- 

 ing of science can hope for much encouragement from 

 rulers developed by such a system as this. As for zeal 

 in the promotion of invention or discovery before the 

 thing aimed at becomes a visible and established fact, 

 let no man look to an English Government department 

 for that. 



If the root of the public evil — England's official neglect 

 of science — is to be found in the medievalism of the 

 public schools, the cause of the evil in the schools them- 

 selves is, to a great extent, to be sought in the classical 

 clerics who are almost invariably placed over them ; for 

 very few of the head masters are men who have received 

 any training in modern science. It is doubtful, how- 

 ever, if this is the whole cause of the unscientific character 

 of the public schools ; for in most, if not in all, of them 

 some science is taught, and in several there are to be 

 found laboratories erected at a cost of many thousands 

 of pounds. But the "modern side" does not rank high 

 in the estimation of the public school, and science is 

 dignified with the name of " stinks." Modern science 

 seems to fit the English public school about as well as a 

 new piece fits an old garment ; and if a knowledge of 

 science is a desirable and important thing in the upper 

 classes of this country, the whole system of the public 

 schools must be overhauled. 



Prof Perry himself says some plain words on this 

 matter (p. 14) : — 



" Much of the evil we suffer from is due to our average 

 young men being pitchforked into works where they get 

 no instruction, as soon as they leave school. If ordinary 

 school education were worth the name, and if school- 

 masters can be brought to see that we do not live in the 

 fifteenth century, if boys were really taught to think for 

 themselves through common sense training in natural 

 science, things would not be so bad. But the average 

 boy leaves an English school with no power to think for 

 himself, and with less than no knowledge of natural 

 science, and he learns what is called mathematics in 

 NO. 1653, VOL. 64] 



such a fashion that he hates the sight of a mathematical 

 expression all his life after." 



It is most true, as Prof Perry said recently in a lecture 

 to working men at South Kensington, that, under our 

 present unscientific educational system, "the most 

 prominent Englishmen understand nothing of those 

 sciences which are transforming all the conditions of 

 civilisation." 



But it is sometimes said in reply to those who complain 

 of the want of scientific knowledge and sympathy on the 

 part of the heads of Government departments, " you 

 must remember that the real managers of these depart- 

 ments are not the heads but the permanent subordinate 

 officials." This may be so, but it is very doubtful if we 

 are any better off in the hands of these permanent 

 officials. The higher appointments of the Home Civil 

 Service are now filled by candidates selected from those 

 who have successfully passed the examination for the 

 Indian Civil Service ; and an investigation will show that 

 about So per cent, of the successful candidates obtain 

 their places by means of classics ; thus the chances of an 

 infusion of scientific thought into the Government offices 

 are not great. 



It is vain to say, as some of our politicians are fond of 

 telling us, that England must depend for the encourage- 

 ment of science upon private benefactions and not upon 

 Government support ; a Government which adopts such 

 a principle is simply shirking one of the greatest of its 

 obligations. 



A striking illustration of the unsympathetic attitude of 

 English Governments towards men of science, and more 

 especially the teachers of science, is always furnished by 

 a perusal of the "New Year" and "Birthday" list of 

 honours. Peerages and baronetcies are given somewhat 

 freely to brewers and political supporters, and a perfect 

 shower of knighthoods and minor honours to a host of 

 officials of whose achievements the nation in general is 

 profoundly ignorant. Now and then a Kelvin, a Lister, 

 or a Stokes appears ; but, though England possesses 

 scientific inventors and discoverers in large numbers, 

 very few of them are thought] worthy of national 

 recognition. 



Setting aside the radical weakness of our school 

 system — its media:;valism — there are some defects that 

 are more easily rectified ; and among these Prof Perry 

 specially emphasises the orthodox procedure in the 

 teaching of mathematics. Nothing but the ingrained 

 conservatism of the English people would continue to 

 base a boy's first knowledge of geometry on the peculiar 

 language and the abstract reasoning of Euclid. Euclid, 

 as has been repeatedly and vainly pointed out, was never 

 written for boys ; Euclid is difficult and not particularly 

 well ordered ; but Euclid is classical, and therefore 

 Euclid is acceptable to the public schools, notwithstand- 

 ing the fact that most boys waste years in attempting to 

 acquire the somewhat grotesque language in which 

 Euclidean logic is couched without attaining a real know- 

 ledge of even the nature of an angle .' To know how 

 Euclid shapes in the minds of the majority of schoolboys, 

 to understand what a keen logical sense and expression 

 they acquire from it by years of practice, one must 

 conduct a public examination in the subject — and then 

 not despair of the human race. 



