Sept. 27, 1883] 



NATURE 



523 



ihat a portion of the imperial revenue should be devoted to 

 heir achievement. In fact, as I have before mentioned, the 

 principle of such an application of public money has Ing 

 been admitted, and is in operation. 



Whilst voluntary donations on the part of private persons can 

 do little to constitute a fund which shall provide the requisite 

 endowment for the scheme of biological institutes which 1 have 

 sketched (not to mention those required for other branches of 

 science), yet those who are interested in the | rogress of scientific 

 investigation may by individual effort do something, however 

 little, towards placing research in a more advantageous position 

 in this country. Supposing it were possible, as I am sanguine 

 enough to believe that it is, to collect in the course of a year or 

 two from private sources a sum of 20,000/. for the maintenance 

 of a biological laboratory and staff, it would be necessary, in 

 expending so limited a sum, to aim at the provision of something 

 which would be likely to produce the largest and most obvious 

 results in return for the outlay, and to benefit the largest number 

 of scientific observers in this department. 



I believe that it is the general opinion among biologists that 

 there could be no more generally useful institution thus set in 

 operation than a biological laboratory upon the sea-coast, which, 

 be ides its own permanent staff of officers, would throw open iis 

 resources to such naturalists as might from time to time be able 

 to devote themselves to researches within its precincts. There 

 is no such laboratory on the whole of the long line of British 

 coast. At Naples there is Dr. Dohrn's celebrated and invaluable 

 laboratory, which is frequented by naturalists from all parts of 

 the world ; at Trieste the Austrian Government supports such a 

 laboratory ; at Concarneaa, Koscoff, and Villefranche, the French 

 Government has such institutions; at Beaufirt, in North Caro- 

 lina, the Johns Hopkins University has its marine laboratory ; and 

 at Newport, Professor Alexander Agassiz has arranged a very 

 perfect institution also for the study of marine life. In spite of 

 the great interest which Engli h naturalists hive always taken in 

 the exploration of the sea and marine organisms — in spite of the 

 fact that the success and even the existence of our fisheries- 

 industries to a large extent depends upon our gaining the know- 

 ledge which a well-organised laboratory of marine biology would 

 help us to gain, there is actually no such institution in existence. 



This is not the occasion on which to explain precisely how and 

 to what extent a laboratory of marine zoilogy might be of 

 national importance. I hope to see that matter brought before 

 the Section daring the course of our meeting. But I may 

 point out now, that though it appears to me that the great need 

 for biological institutes, to which I have drawn your attention, 

 can not be met by private munificence, and must in the end be 

 arranged for by the continued action of the Government in carry- 

 ing out a policy to which it has for many years been committed, 

 and which has been approved by Con ervativesand Liberals alike 

 — yet such a special institution as a laboratory of marine biology, 

 serving as a temporary workshop to any and all of our numerous 

 students of the important problems connected with the life of 

 marine plants and animals, might very well be undertaken from 

 private funds. Should it be possible, on the occasion of this 

 meeting of the British Association in Southport, to obtain some 

 promise of assistance towards the realisation of this project, I 

 think we shall be able to congratulate ourselves on having done 

 something, though small perhaps in amount, towards making 

 better provision for biological research, and therefore something 

 towards tbe advancement of science. 



In conclusion, let me say that, in advocating to-day the claim 

 of biological science to a far greater measure of support than it 

 receives at present from the public funds, I have endeavoured to 

 press that claim chiefly on the ground of the obvious utility to 

 the community of that kind of knowledge which is called biology. 

 I have endeavoured to meet the opposition of those who object 

 to the interference of the State wherever it may be possible to 

 attain the end in view without such interference, but who | rofess 

 themselves willing to see public money expended in promoting 

 objects which are of real importance to the country, and which 

 cannot be trusted to the voluntary enterprise arising from the 

 operation of the laws of self-preservation and the struggle for 

 wealth. There are, however, it seems to me, further reasons for 

 desiring a thorough and practical recognition by the State of the 

 value of scientific research. There are not wanting persons of 

 some cultivation who have perceived and fully realised the value 

 of that knowledge which is called science, and of its methods, 

 and yet are anxious to restrain rather than to aid the growth of 

 that knowledge. They find in science something inimical to their 

 own interests, and accordingly either condemn it as dangerous 



and untrustworthy, or encourage them ehes to treat it with con- 

 tempt by asserting that "after all, science counts for very little" 

 —a statement which is unhappily true in one sen-e, though 

 totally untrue when it is intended to signify that the progress. <_f 

 science is not a matter which profoundly influences every factor 

 in the well-being of the community. Amongst such ptople there 

 is a positive hatred of science, which finds expression in their 

 exclusion of it, even at this day, from the ordinary curriculum 

 of public school education, and in the baseless though oft-repeated 

 calumny that science is hostile to art, and is responsible for all 

 that is har.-.h, ugly, and repulsive in modern life. To such 

 opponents of the advancement of science, it is of little use to 

 offer explanations and arguments. Bat we may, when we reflect 

 on their instinctive hostility and the misrepresentations of science 

 and the scientific spirit which it leads them to disseminate, console 

 ourselves by bringing to mind what science really is, and what 

 truly is the nature of ihat calling in which a man whi makes new 

 knowledge is engaged. 



They mock at the botanist as a pedant, and the zoologist as a 

 monomaniac ; they execrate the physiologist as a monster of 

 cruelty, and brand the geologist as a blasphemer ; chemi-try is 

 held responsible for tbe abomination of aniline dyes and the 

 pollution of rivers, and physics for the dirt and misery of great 

 Factory town-. By thtse unbelievers science is declared respon- 

 sible for individual eccentricities of character, as well as for the 

 sins of the commercial utilisers of ne« knowledge. The pursuit 

 of science is said to produce a dearth of imagination, incapa- 

 bility of enjoying the beauty either of nature or of art, scorn of 

 literary culture, arrogance, irreverence, vaniiy, and the aoibition 

 of personal glorification. 



Such are the charges from time to time made by those who 

 dislike science, and fur such reasons they would withhold, and 

 persuade others to withhold, the fair measure of support for 

 scientific research which this country owes to the community of 

 civilised States. Not in reply to these misrepresentations, tut 

 by way of contrast, I would here state what science seems to be 

 to those who are on the other side, and how, therefore, it seems 

 to them wrong to delay in doing all that the wealth and power 

 of the State can do to promote its progress. 



Science is not a name applicable to any one branch of know- 

 ledge, but includes all knowdedge which is of a certain order or 

 scale of completene-s. All knowdedge which is deep enough to 

 touch the causes of things, is Science ; all inquiry into the causes 

 of things is scientific inquiry. It is not only co-extensive with 

 the area of human knowledge, but no branch of it can advance 

 far without reacting upon other branches; no department of 

 Science can be neglected without sooner or later causing a check 

 to other departments. No man can truly say this branch of 

 Science is useful and shall be cultivated, whilst this is worthless 

 and shall be let alone ; for all are necessary, and one grows by 

 the aid of another, and in turn furnishes methods and results 

 assisting in ihe progress of that from which it lately borrowed. 



We desire the increase and the support and the acceptance of 

 Science, not only because it has a certain material value and 

 enables men to battle wiih the forces of nature and to turn them 

 to account, so as to increase both the intensity and the extension 

 of healthy human life : that is a good reason, and for some 

 persons, it may be, the only rea-on. But there is something to 

 be said beyond this. 



The pursuit of scientific discovery, the making of new know- 

 ledge, gratifies an appetite which, from whatever cause it may 

 arise, is deeply seated in man's nature, and indeed is the most 

 distinctive of his properties. Man owes this intense desire to 

 know the nature of things, smothered though it often be by 

 other cravings which he shares with the brutes, to an inherited 

 race-perception stronger than the reasoning faculty of the 

 individual. When once aroused and in a mea-ure gratified, this 

 desire becomes a guiding passion. The instinctive tendency to 

 search out the causes of things, gradually strengthening as 

 generation after generation of men have stumbled and struggled 

 in ignorance, has at last become an active and widely extending 

 force t it has given ri-e to a new faith. 



To obey this instinct — that is, to aid in the production of new 

 knowledge — is the keenest and the purest pleasure of which man 

 is capable, greater than that derive! from the exercise of his 

 animal faculties, in proportion as man's mind is something greater 

 and further developed than the mind of brutes. It is in itself 

 an unmixed good, the one thing which commends itself as still 

 " worth while" when all other employments and delights prove 

 themselves stale and unprofitable. 



Arrogant and foolish as those men have appeared who, in 



