210 
NATORE 
[ DECEMBER 31, 1903 
industries, that they develop the right sort of education 
of the people; that the people shall be so educated as to 
become resourceful, full of initiative and invention, capable 
of learning from experience, people of character. Again, if 
our rulers set a fashion of gibing at scientific things, at 
technical education, for example, through ignorance, it is 
not unimportant to know that the complete loss of trades 
like the coal tar industries may be more serious evils than 
the loss of several campaigns in war used to be. If the 
Prime Minister, or any other minister, gives an important 
post to a non-scientific man, it may not be harmful, but 
sometimes it may be very harmful indeed; it may lead to 
the appointment of many unscientific men or the disgrace 
of the scientific men already engaged in some department 
where science is all important. But the evil is very much 
more far reaching than one can describe in words. Want 
of science in the rulers means neglect of scientific education 
and method throughout the whole country. 
For your man of caste is an Oxford man, and as a ruler 
of his country he regulates all sorts of courses of instruction 
and examinations for the army, the navy, the Civil Service, 
the Indian Civil, the Colonial, and all sorts of other services, 
and he takes care that all these shall be on Oxford lines. 
The higher permanent officials are chosen by Oxford 
standards. The members of scientific committees appointed 
to assist Government departments are chosen by Oxford 
standards. Do educational experts suggest reforms in 
education, it is Oxford that determines whether the re- 
form is received sympathetically or otherwise. Probably 
nowhere is the influence of Oxford felt more than in the 
primary schools of the country. 
I know you are proud that Oxford should have so great 
an influence, and I do not suppose you will pay any atten- 
tion when I suggest that it may lead to national misfortune. 
If Oxford scholars were merely like so many monks in 
their monastery, living the lives, following the studies 
which they love, I would say nothing. The revenues so 
used up are, I think, of no great importance to the country, 
and busy men elsewhere can only be benefited in knowing 
that there are these lovely lamaseries where men are living 
in serene air apart from the struggles of the world, living 
what they think to be the higher kind of life, that of the 
amateur copying the lives of the scholars of Constantinople 
before they were so mercifully scattered in 1453, copying 
the meditative ways of the divines and hermits of the fourth 
and fifth centuries. 
But the Oxford hermit is also a ruler of an empire in 
the twentieth century. Edward the Confesser was a saint, 
but some of us think that he was not a very wise ruler of 
England. Louis XVI., too, was an amiable man. The 
downfall of nations has generally come from the too great 
power of some quite amiable amateur persons or corpor- 
ations. It is mainly through her too great influence on the 
ruling families of England that I consider Oxford to be 
dangerous. 
What, then, is it that we want? We affirm that all so 
good as the development of the faculties of the average 
Oxford man may be, it might be enormously increased. 
He learns by observation and experiment; he and his fore- 
fathers have never learnt anything otherwise. Why not, 
then, increase for him these chances of observation and 
trial? Frankly confess that to develop his reasoning facul- 
ties through mere repetition of the text of Simpson’s Euclid 
is an absurdity, that he cannot at all take in abstract 
reasoning ; that the academic methods of teaching mathe- 
matics and its applications are what we all know them to 
be, mere frauds. Some of our Chancellors of the Ex- 
chequer are known to have been ignorant of arithmetic. 
There are fine jokes—jokes understood even by board school 
children—told about Foreign and War Ministers of England 
who were quite ignorant of geography. ‘‘ Bless my soul, 
you don’t say so—Actually Cape Breton is an island— 
actually. I must go to the King at once and tell him that 
our great expedition has been sent to an island! ” 
These are no longer jokes to me; I merely feel that it 
is extraordinary that a man can have been so educated as 
to be a good debater, to be able to make a fine speech, that 
he may have taken a degree at Oxford, that he may have 
passed examinations in classics, philosophy and mathe- 
matics, and yet be exceedingly ignorant, illogical, unscien- 
NO. 1783, VOL. 69] 
tific, and unable to do easy computation. Some of us say 
that it is only through the experimental study of natural 
science, and not at all through the classics, that the brain 
of the average Englishman can be educated on that side 
which is never educated at the present time. We say that 
he is never taught English, yet history and English litera- 
ture are finer mediums for his education than ancient 
classics. We say that if when young he was taught to be 
fond of reading English—and every child may be made fond 
of reading—later on he would be able, and very willing, to 
use books, and that a man who is fond of reading and is. 
able to use books keeps educating himself all his life long. 
But books alone at Oxford are not enough. They are not 
wise the men who think that lectures and books alone, and 
observing lecture-table experiments, can give men an 
acquaintance with the great discoveries in natural know- 
ledge which are revolutionising the world. 
Do you know the ballad about the Count Arnaldos who 
envied the old helmsman his weird and wondrous powers? 
“* Would’st thou, thus the helmsman answered, 
Learn the secret of the sea, 
Only th se that brave its dangers 
Comprehend its mystery.”” 
I know there are many men in Oxford who think, like 
the wistful Count, that they can get all things easily or 
from mere reading. But, in truth, to read *t The Origin 
of Species,’’ or treatises on geology or astronomy or 
physics or chemistry is a misleading performance unless. 
the reader brings to the study that kind of mind which has- 
been developed already by his own observation and his own 
experiment. My classical friends laugh at me when I say 
that I know much Greek literature through translations, 
and yet they pretend to be able to weigh scientific argu- 
ments without having made any practical study of science. 
At all events I know my defects. I know that although a 
translation may give me in every particular the meaning of 
a Greek author, it cannot give me the music of the old 
language; the reasoning and facts are mine, but not the 
emotion. And when my classical friends say that they can 
weigh scientific arguments I laugh, for there are parts of 
those arguments as much beyond their comprehension as 
scientific evidence is beyond the comprehension of a Chancery 
Court. Who can compete with a barrister in reading, in 
extracting the meaning of a written document? and yet 
barristers fail utterly in getting scientific knowledge from 
books. 
Besides the aristocratic undergraduates you have a larger 
number of middle class men at Oxford who will succeed 
their fathers in the management, not merely of landed 
estates, but of much more valuable estates in the distribu- 
tion and manufacture of things. The education of these men 
from infancy has been on the same lines as that of their 
superiors, but it has been much more artificial, and remains. 
much less thorough to the end of the Oxford course. There: 
is, however, the same contempt for books, for learning, and 
the same absence, not merely of knowledge of natural 
science, but of those scientific habits of thought and methods. 
of approaching problems which experimental research tends. 
to produce. They are proud of being Oxford men, and are 
even more strongly imbued than the others with Oxford utili-- 
tarian prejudices. They have studied mathematics—mathe- 
matics is useless in business. Natural science was said to be 
taught at Oxford, and no man seemed one bit the better 
for having studied it—natural science is useless in business.. 
These men become the owners of factories the spirit of which 
ought to be scientific research; the competing factories in 
Germany, France and America are run by men of scien- 
tific method, and our men discourage reform in every: 
possible way. The rule of thumb of their fathers and grand— 
fathers is good enough for them. Their factories are so» 
badly arranged that the works cost of any manufacture is: 
twice what it ought to be, and the time taken is twice as- 
great. They take eagerly to all sorts of quack remedies. 
for bad trade; they are easy victims to fraudulent persons. 
These are the men who discourage all education in the 
people employed by them, managers, foremen, and work- 
men. They are what I call unskilled workmen, that is, 
unskilled owners of works, and it is Oxford which is to 
blame for their unskilfulness. It is astounding how quickly 
the thriving businesses of the fathers are decaying, how 
quickly unskilled owners of works are being eliminated, 
