NATURE 
375 
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1870 
THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON SCIENCE 
HE Council of the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science was received on Friday last by Earl 
de Grey, Lord President of the Council, as a deputation to 
urge on the Government the issuing of a Royal Commis- 
sion to inquire into the state of Science in England. 
That such a body, representing as it does, not only 
the science but the intellect of the nation, more fully 
than, perhaps, any other association in the kingdom, 
should take so decided a step is sufficient proof that in 
the judgment of those best qualified to guide public 
opinion on the subject, our scientific system needs 
reform. 
The truth is that we have no scientific system, properly 
so called. Nothing can be more distinct than Prof. 
Stokes’s statement to Earl de Grey as to the incomplete- 
ness of our arrangements. We have it on his authority 
that a certain class of Astronomical observations is carried 
on at the Royal Observatory and that natural objects are 
displayed at the British Museum ; but that experimental 
research receives “little or no support” from the State. 
It is not easy to frame a plausible distinction between 
these branches of science, which shall justify support 
in one case and neglect in the other. The existing 
anomaly may be explained by the facts that astronomy and 
natural history have engaged the attention of man from 
the earliest ages and that they appeal palpably to his senses ; 
whilst chemistry and physics are comparatively recent 
studies, whose aims and processes and even many of 
their results are understood and appreciated only by the 
few, though ministering to the welfare of all. Chemistry, 
in the modern sense of the word, is not a century old ; 
electricity and electro-magnetism are younger still. Mainly 
by private means, these and cognate branches of science 
have been advanced in England to their present stage ; 
“but,” says Prof. Stokes, “it was perfectly obvious that 
there were many investigations which it was desirable 
to carry out and which would require the main part of a 
man’s time ; but which involved appliances on so large a 
scale as to be beyond the power and scope of a private 
establishment.” The plain inference from this pregnant 
statement is that these desirable investigations cannot be 
carried on for want of means. It is notorious, indeed, 
that progress is stayed in many important directions for 
want of those “appliances and establishments ” and that 
“time” which it is hopeless to expect from private 
sources. 
Still, it may be urged that there is not so much need 
for these investigations as to demand that the State 
should undertake them; or, that the help of the State has 
something noxious about it which tends to paralyse the 
spirit of philosophical inquiry. Let us examine these 
two very different objections. The simple answer to the 
first is given by the very proposal of the deputation. They 
do not, on their sole representation, weighty though that 
must be admitted to be, demand that Government physical 
laboratories shall be established. They say, “ We think 
such things are wanted ; but do not take our word for it. 
Inquire ; constitute a commission composed of persons 
of station, independence and statescraft, to receive our 
statements and to sift from them our interested en- 
thusiasm, reducing what may be our too soaring. aspira- 
tions to practical and business-like proportions. Inquire 
first and then act, if you see fit; but do not persist in 
neglecting, without inquiry, things that ought to be done.” 
With regard to the second objection, namely the para- 
lysing effect of State aid, we can only treat it as a purely 
sentimental notion. Does Mr. Airy’s salary paralyse 
astronomy? Does Sir Henry James’s salary paralyse 
Geodesy? Does the money spent on art at South Ken- 
sington, on pictures for the National Gallery and on 
collections at the British Museum, paralyse those estab- 
lishments? Is there something so peculiar in experi- 
mental labours as to place them in a category by them- 
selves, subjecting them to malign influences from 
which the whole of the rest of the business of life is 
exempt? Are such labours so exceptional in their nature 
that whilst a public body like the Royal Institution shall 
purchase apparatus and pay salaries and thus stimulate the 
genius of Davy, Faraday and Tyndall, the same apparatus 
and stipends given to them by the State must have 
reduced these men to torpor ? 
But to return to practical matters. The main points 
fora Royal Commission to throw light upon are these. 
First, is it right that science should be aided at all by the 
State? Secondly, is the aid now given exactly what is 
needed—neither too much nor too little? Thirdly, the 
degree and direction in which science should become a 
State business having been settled, what will be the best 
organisation for the purpose? Not one of these points 
has ever yet been thoroughly considered in England. At 
present all is arbitrary, inconsistent and incomplete : or, 
to use Prof. Huxley's comprehensive word, “chaotic.” 
The British Association wishes naturally to reduce 
chaos to order and they wisely begin—not by defi- 
nite requisitions for things which few out of their 
charmed circle know the value of; but by a moderate 
demand for inquiry. This cannot possibly be refused to 
them. The nation is thoroughly awakened to a sense of 
its shortcomings as to education and it will be quite 
prepared to further those ends to which education is 
merely a means. The outlay which it will be called upon 
to provide need not be great ; indeed, at first we shall 
have to deal more with the utilisation of what we already 
possess, than with the creation of new means. ‘The great 
point is first to establish a sound principle of working and 
then to apply it by degrees, with caution and economy. 
The word education reminds us of its occurrence in the 
course of the proceedings before Lord de Grey. Educa- 
tion and Science so naturally associate themselves in the 
mind that it is hardly possible to discuss the latter as 
independent of the former. Almost all the great conti- 
nental scientific endowments include instruction in some 
form or other. And in this country the greater number 
of our most distinguished men of science are professors 
and teachers. The question of scientific instruction must, 
therefore, necessarily be considered by those who inquire 
into the question of scientific research. This will be by 
no means the easiest part of their labour. The complaint 
now is that men eminently qualified for research have too 
much of their time occupied in teaching. It will be difficult 
so to apportion the two functions that they shall reinforce 
and not obstruct each other. And again, there are some 
