NATURE 



[December 23, 1909 



It is ridiculous to say nowadays that the study of the 

 liumanities consists solely of the study of the writings and 

 philosophy of the ancients ; to take that view is to take 

 the view of the schoolmen, the death-blow to which was 

 given by Bacon and Bruno. 



We have got beyond that; we- claim that the true study 

 of the humanities is a far wider thing — it is the study of 

 the stupendous mechanism of the universe of which man 

 forms a part, and the understanding of which is necessary 

 for his happiness. That is the true humanity of which 

 the other forms only a small portion. The time is coming 

 when the principal preoccupation of man shall be the 

 gradual disclosure of this mechanism and his principal 

 delight the contemplation of its beauty. For remember 

 what Plato himself said : the whole of nature, so far as 

 it really exists, is a revelation of God. 



In spite of the work and writings of such men as Bacon 

 and Bruno in the end of the sixteenth century, the pro- 

 gress of science was at first but slow and the workers 

 few. We have, of course, the immortal achievements of 

 Newton and Harvey, and the foundation of the Royal 

 Society, and the tremendous outburst of scholarship as 

 typified in this country by Bentley and his co-workers ; 

 but the eighteenth century was, on the whole, characterised 

 by intellectual quiescence both in scientific output and in 

 literary creation. The quiescence was apparent rather 

 than real. To borrow a metaphor from the garden, though 

 there was little growth above ground, active root forma- 

 tion was going on. Linnseus (1707-78) was at work in 

 Sweden creating the framework which rendered future 

 work in botany and zoology possible; Buffon in France 

 was cautiously feeling his way towards a theorv of organic 

 evolution; Henry Cavendish (1731-1810), Joseph Priestley 

 (i733-'8o4), and .^ntoine Lavoisier (1743-94) were laving 

 the foundations of modern chemistry ; Albrecht von Haller 

 (1707-77), Kaspar Friederick Wolff (1733-94), and John 

 Hunter (172S-93), those of anatomy and physiology. The 

 spade-work of these men, together with the improvement 

 of the microscope, was necessary for the great outburst 

 of scientific investigation which characterised the nineteenth 

 century. Ushered in by the work of Cuvier (1769-1832), 

 Lamarck (1744-1829), St. Hilaire (1772-1844), in biologv, 

 Thomas Young (1773-1829), Laplace (1749-1S27), Volta 

 (1745-1827), Carnot (175S-1823), in physics, it was adorned 

 in its middle and latter period bv the names of Davy, 

 Faraday, Dalton, .'\rago, Richard" Owen, Darwin, Lyell, 

 Joh. Miiller, Agassiz, Helmholtz, Stokes, Kelvin, and 

 Pasteur. 



The advance of knowledge is yearly becoming more 

 rapid ; if its steps were slow and hesitating in the seven- 

 teenth and eighteenth centuries, and if it quickened to a 

 rapid walk in the nineteenth, we now hear the sound of 

 a trot, which at the end of the century will be a gallop, 

 and as the centuries succeed one another its pace will 

 ■become even faster. Where will it lead us, and what will 

 te the upshot for man ? 



But it is no part of my purpose to-day to give vou an 

 ■historical summary of scientific progress. The point I 

 -wish to illustrate is the vast increase in the scientific army 

 and in the results achieved by them. 



My thesis is that pure research into the sequence of 

 natural phenomena is in itself of the greatest importance 

 to the progress and welfare of humanity, and that a 

 great statesman can have no higher aim than to solve 

 the problem of how it may best be fostered. To what 

 extent can such a thesis be justified by experience? 



I might begin by examining the origin and progress of 

 ■our knowledge of what is called current electricity, to 

 which modern life, from a material point of view, owes 

 s,> much. In illustration of what we owe to workers in 

 electrical science I need only mention land telegraphy, 

 ocean telegraphy, wireless telegraphy, telephones, electric 

 light, electric traction, and our knowledge of radio-activity. 

 The history of this science forms, perhaps, the best 

 example of the importance to man of pure, apparently 

 useless, scientific research, for at every stage of it, from 

 Galvani's original observation through the discoveries of 

 the Swede Oersted and of the Frenchman Ampere to those 

 of our own Faraday and to the theoretical adumbrations 

 of Clerk Maxwell and to the researches of Crookes on the 

 ■passage of electricity through vacuum tubes, we meet with 

 NO. 2095, VOL. 82] 



the investigation of phenomena which were apparently per- 

 fectly useless, and which to most practical men must at 

 the time they were made have appeared as little more than 

 scientific toys provided by nature for the harmless amuse- 

 ment of the queer people who meet in the rooms of the 

 Royal Society and suchlike places where unpractical oddities 

 resort. And yet I ask you to reflect upon the astounding 

 results which have arisen from Galvani's observations made 

 to discover the cause of the twitching of the frog's legs, 

 and of Faraday's discovery of induction, and to indulge 

 your imaginations in an endeavour to predict v.'hat may 

 issue for man from Crookes's investigations of the glow 

 without heat of the vacuum tubes. 



But I have neither the knowledge nor the time to dwell 

 upon the physical side of science. As in private duty 

 bound, I must devote the short time at my disposal to 

 examples culled from the biological sciences. 



The great Frenchman Pasteur, in making a thorough 

 examination of the process by which alcohol was obtained 

 from sugar, discovered the part played by the organism 

 known as yeast, and established the idea of organised 

 ferment bodies. He extended his observations to other 

 micro-organisms, and, in conjunction with his co-workers, 

 among whom must be included those who were looking 

 into the question of the spontaneous generation of living 

 matter, deliniteiy gave us the idea that putrefaction was 

 caused by micro-organisms acting upon organic matter, 

 that these micro-organisms are capable of resisting 

 drought, and when dried float freely in the air and are 

 distributed everywhere. When they fall upon a suitable 

 material their vital activity is resumed, and they increase 

 with incredibte rapidity and set up putrefaction. It was 

 reserved for our distinguished countryman Lister, then a 

 surgeon in Edinburgh, to recognise the importance of these 

 discoveries for surgery. Knowing of the researches of 

 Pasteur and his fellow-workers, he conceived the idea that 

 suppuration was due to putrefaction in the organic matter 

 of the wounds caused by micro-organisms. Acting on this, 

 he introduced his method of antiseptic surgery, by which 

 his name has been rendered immortal. I think we may 

 say that no single application of the results of pure re- 

 search has done more to preserve human life and to 

 diminish human suffering than this linking up by Lister of 

 the putrefaction of suppuration with the work of his pre- 

 decessors on the effects of the actions of micro-organisms 

 upon organic matter. It is well to notice, in passing, that 

 this discovery of Lord Lister's is a good illustration of 

 the difficulty which the human mind has of conceiving 

 even the simplest new idea. To us, now, how simple 

 seems the step which Lister made ; yet there were 

 thousands of surgeons in the world who failed to make it, 

 though they were continually dealing with suppurating 

 wounds and wondering why they suppurated, and when it 

 was made it was stoutly discredited by many quite able 

 men. 



I must now turn to another subject which is closely 

 connected with the preceding, and well illustrates my 

 thesis that pure scientific research, without reference 

 to practical utility, is of the highest importance to man- 

 kind. 



It will doubtless have occurred to many of you to ask 

 the question, How is it, if the air contains floating in it 

 the dried spores of multitudinous micro-organisms which 

 only need a suitable medium for their development and 

 increase, how is it that they do not obtain a lodgment in 

 the healthy animal body, which one would think offers all 

 the conditions necessary to their growth? It can easily 

 be shown that the air we breathe, the water we drink, 

 the food we eat, everything that we touch, swarms with 

 these microscopic creatures ; that they enter our lungs, 

 that they germinate in our skin, that they occur in count- 

 less numbers in our alimentary canals, in short, that they 

 are found everywhere on our body surfaces. How is it 

 that they do not increase and turn our organs into a 

 seething mass of putrefying corruption? One would expect 

 that even if the skin and the membrane bounding tl'.e 

 internal organs to which they obtain entrance incurred 

 the slightest lesion, even a pin-prick, that they would have 

 been able to enter. We know that after death they at 

 once obtain complete dominion, and we therefore infer 

 that in life there must be some protective mechanism in 

 . the body capable of dealing with them. 



