358 



NATURE 



[June 5, 1913 



employer and employee. But did anyone consider 

 that this was a normal or inevitable condition of 

 things? Surely not. It was the result of human 

 forces ignorantly applied and producing woe where 

 the common weal should prevail. Both parties in 

 the struggle usually displayed an equal amount of 

 ignorance, but with a truly educated people all indus- 

 trial progress should be admittedly dependent on the 

 perfect accord between capital and labour in the pur- 

 suit of an end mutually advantageous. The lament- 

 able condition of things had been of late the subject 

 of Parliamentary and Government concern. Admir- 

 able means, including the recommendation of the 

 principle of the minimum wage, had been devised 

 and must be continued, but meanwhile the whole 

 nation was being kept in a condition of inefficiency 

 compared with what they knew would be possible 

 were the whole industrial population of employers and 

 employed working together in perfect accord and 

 with the common aim of producing the most perfect 

 products at the minimum of cost and maximum of 

 benefit to both labour and capital. Such accord 

 would, he believed, be found to lie in some system 

 of profit-sharing between employer and employed, 

 which if scientifically applied would most certainly 

 lead to increased efficiency and contentment. 



He submitted, therefore, that it would be a proper 

 function of the British Science Guild to study and, if 

 possible, to initiate by some considered recommenda- 

 tions a new order of industrial organisation, based on 

 scientific principles of management, in which full 

 justice would be done to all the interests involved in 

 developing to a condition of maximum efficiency the 

 great resources of the nation. 



At the banquet of the British Science Guild, held 

 on Monday, May 26, the following speech was de- 

 livered by Sir David Gill, K.C.B., in proposing the 

 toast of the guild : — ■ 



I have been asked to propose the toast of the British 

 Science Guild — and I rise to do so with much pleasure, 

 because I feel and know that the objects for which 

 it was founded are most worthy, and because in many 

 •directions the guild is doing good and useful work. 



The aims and objects of the guild may be sum- 

 marised in a few words, viz. to bring science and 

 scientific habits of thought to bear upon the problems 

 of everyday life and administration. The guild has no 

 politics in the ordinary sense of the word. It belongs 

 to no political party — its object is to help any party, 

 be it Radical or Conservative, or any department of 

 State, any Parliamentary Committee or individual 

 administration with advice or assistance based on 

 scientific knowledge. 



It is sad to think how very few of our leading 

 politicians — how very few, indeed, of our members of 

 Parliament — have any serious knowledge of science ; 

 and yet it is upon science, and largely upon science 

 alone, that the whole progress of our modern civilisa- 

 tion depends. I would be the last man in the world 

 to deny the advantages of culture as it was under- 

 stood 100 years ago. I mean the civilising, the refin- 

 ing, and the elevating influence of literature, art, and 

 philosophy, apart from modern science based on ex- 

 periment and observation. But it is not by progress 

 in the older directions that we have to look chiefly for 

 the modern betterment of mankind — the betterment 

 of the health, the comfort, the safety, and the con- 

 venience of the great body of our fellow-citizens. We 

 must go back to the days of Greece for the sculptures 

 that in the present day we strive to emulate ; and the 

 like is true of the architecture of Greece and of our 

 early cathedral builders. We have to go back to 

 Giotte for reverence in painting, to Holbein, Titian, 

 Giorgioni, Rembrandt, and Velasquez for other quali- 

 NO. 2275, VOL. 91] 



ties in art that we cannot equal in the present day. 

 In literature it is the same story — Homer, Virgil, 

 Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton are not of our day, 

 nor have we since seen their like. In philosophy I 

 doubt if we have made much real advance since the 

 days of Plato. 



But in science what has not the progress been in 

 recent days ? That is a story known to you all, and I 

 need scarcely dwell upon it. Tycho Brahe, Kepler, 

 and Newton have laid the foundation of the fair super- 

 structure of modern dynamical astronomy ; and Stokes, 

 Kirchoff, and Bunsen have laid on a no less sure 

 foundation our present-day knowledge of the chemistry 

 of suns and worlds other than our own. Chemistry 

 and physics have advanced with giant strides within 

 the last century, and in the present day we see the 

 dawn of a knowledge of the constitution of the atom. 



The invention of the steam engine is, by comparison 

 with the fullness of art in the days of Greece, a thing 

 of yesterday, and so practically is the scientific 

 coordination of the laws of heat and electricity, the 

 invention of the dynamo, and the transformation of 

 energy into light and heat and vice versd. The 

 mythical aether is used to convey our wireless mes- 

 sages around the world, and we can travel on sea 

 and land with a rapidity, comfort, and luxury almost 

 undreamt of by men of only fifty years ago. We can 

 travel, if we so desire, under the sea or over the sea, 

 or we can fly in the air. 



Medical science has made marvellous strides. Pain 

 and suffering have been diminished and life has been 

 prolonged. All these are steps in the progress of 

 mankind, in the betterment of the conditions of life, 

 which we owe to science and to science alone. I am 

 aware that there is still a school of men who contend 

 that we are no happier or better for this progress. I 

 need scarcely say that I do not agree with them, but 

 I do not propose to bore you with arguments on so 

 trite a subject ; the simple fact remains that if we, 

 in these little islands of ours, do not progress with 

 the times by the aid of science and the cultivation of 

 our manhood, we shall be left behind in the race of 

 progress — a strong man armed will come upon us and 

 our inheritance will another take. 



That is absolutely certain ; so that whether the men 

 of old were wiser and happier without science is not 

 a question that requires discussion. The simple alter- 

 native is whether, in face of the competition of other 

 nations, we of this presently great Empire are to be 

 content to give up our place and power, or whether 

 by the successful cultivation of our manhood and our 

 science, we shall keep our place among the nations. 

 Since science is so important to our existence as a 

 nation, is it not strange that amongst our leading 

 legislators there are so few who have any reasonable 

 acquaintance with science? 



I do not speak so much of the ordinary member of 

 Parliament — he, poor man, in the present day, has 

 got very little to do with the government of the 

 country. He may have his convictions, he may have 

 devoted time and knowledge and thought to the pre- 

 paration of a useful Bill — but the chance of getting it 

 even discussed by the House of Commons" is small 

 indeed ; he may be thankful if he is not compelled by 

 the crack of the party whip to vote for something that 

 is in total opposition to the principles of his own Bill. 



The real government of the country lies thus in the 

 hands of a comparatively small number of men, and 

 too often of men who have been selected for fluency 

 of speech, readiness in debate, and a certain personal 

 magnetism that appeals to the masses, rather than 

 for the qualities of the highest statesmanship and 

 sound scientific knowledge. The politician as a rule 

 has had an eye to politics from an early age, and 

 his reading has gone in the direction of history and 



