October 22, 1908J 



NA TURE 



639 



our legislators and administrators is in no way to 

 belittle other kinds of knowledge. As the Rector of 

 the Imperial College of Science and Technology said 

 in a recent address, " the scientific man is, after 

 all, first a man and then a man of science, nothing 

 which leaves out of sight his obligation to rule his 

 life in accordance with the highest standards of 

 health, of religion, and of morals, can fairly be called 

 a good education." The student of science, then, 

 must not ignore that great body of humanistic learn- 

 ing which has always been held in high esteem at 

 our ancient universities. There is every reason why 

 the man of science should be so far as practicable also 

 a man of letters. Humanists and men of science alike 

 must remember, indeed they are remembering, that 

 culture is something broader and higher than 

 mediceval schoolmen imagined. The scholar steeped 

 in classical lore, yet ignorant of nature and her laws, 

 is, we are beginning to realise, an uneducated pedant. 

 The specialist in science, sublimely unconscious of the 

 beauties of literature, and knowing nothing of the 

 ideas of ancient and modern poets and philosophers, 

 is a hopeless Philistine. How much the man of 

 science mav learn from the man of letters, and how 

 beneficial to scientific work the influence exerted by 

 literature may be, the Vice-Chancellor showed con- 

 vincingly towards the end of his address. 



I think no less that the man of science has much to 

 learn from the man of letters. It has certainly been the 

 case that the best men, or many of the best men, of 

 science have been men full of the love and spirit of letters, 

 keenly sensible of the beauty and attraction both of poetry 

 and of prose. It was the case, as we all know, wilh 

 Huxley and with Tyndall. It was so with Helmholtz, 

 whose intellectual relation to Goethe is a most interesting 

 episode. The fact is not so generally recognised, but it 

 was the case with Darwin. It may seem a paradox to 

 say that Darwin was a " man of letters," but I am 

 almost prepared to maintain it. Too much has been made 

 of the well-known passage in his autobiography in which 

 he describes how he lost, through atrophy, his love for 

 poetry, and not enough has been made of tlie warmth 

 and the keenness of that love in his earlier days. He was 

 a boy at Shrewsbury in the ultra-classical days of that 

 very classical school, and was rebuked by Dr. Butler, the 

 headmaster, who called him a " pococurante " because he 

 worked at chemistry. But he tells us that he was very 

 fond at school of the " Odes " of Horace ; and when we 

 find him, in that delightful book, the " Voyage of the 

 Beagle," quoting in a few consecutive pages lines from 

 the " Third Aeneid " of Virgil and from Shellej in the 

 most natural and spontaneous manner, I think we may 

 assert that his love of letters was lively and deep, and 

 likely to have a permanent effect on himself. I have 

 always thought some of the pages of the " Origin of 

 Species " — for instance, the concluding pages — among the 

 most poetical pieces of prose in the English language, and 

 1 think the secret of that style is to be found partly in 

 the hereditary gift of his family, and partly in the early 

 cultivation which it received. Again, few things are more 

 fascinating to the thinker than the history of early Greek 

 philosophy — those wonderful guesses (afterwards passed on 

 to the Romans) with which the Greek thinkers anticipated 

 in an intuitive and in exact manner the theories and 

 demonstrations of later science. I would have the student 

 of Dalton familiar with the guesses of Democritus and 

 their repetition by Lucretius, and familiar, if possible, with 

 them in their place in history. I would have the student 

 of Aristotle read Darwin, and the student of Darwin read, 

 as Huxley did, his Aristotle. 



Dr. Warren's address, as we have said, may well 

 fill men of science with hope as to the future of our 

 old universities. It has often been our duty to point 

 out in these columns how the nation has suffered 

 from the erroneous ideas which have prevailed at 

 Oxford and elsewhere as to the educational needs of 



NO. 2034, VOL. 78] 



students destined to become members of Parliament 

 or civil servants in high places. Again and again 

 insistence has been laid on the fact that the kind of 

 education suited to the conditions of the days of the 

 Renaissance is not in harmony with present-day needs. 

 The work of men of science in the last hundred years 

 has revolutionised life, but it is only now that it is 

 beginning to be understood that the education given 

 by our universities and by our schools of every grade 

 must be adapted to present and coming needs. 



Recent years have witnessed in many of our gi^eat 

 provincial cities the growth of new universities fired with 

 modern ideals ; universities vt-hich look to the union of 

 the scientific spirit with all that is best in humanistic 

 learning to produce men cognisant of modern needs 

 and conditions, and fitted to grapple with the difficul- 

 ties inseparable from the administration of a great 

 empire. The increasing competition among the great 

 nations for pride of place, whether in industrial war- 

 fare, in intellectual rivalry, or in the contest to secure 

 the most satisfactory social conditions, will be decided 

 eventually in favour of the people most able to apply 

 the methods and conclusions of science. In other 

 words, that nation will prevail which succeeds in best 

 educating at its places of higher learning the men in 

 whose hands its destinies must be placed. 



These truths are understood at our new universities, 

 and modern requirements are shaping their regula- 

 tions, their courses of work, and their general 

 administration. Dr. Warren's address leads us to 

 believe that the aims and objects of the new univer- 

 sities are appreciated at Oxford, and that it is intel- 

 ligently and completely known by the university 

 authorities that no slackening of effort and no fainting 

 bv the way must be permitted in the work which has 

 been so successfully begun of making O.xford a great 

 scientific university. 



FIBRES FOR PAPER-MAKING. 

 'T'HE Agricultural Department of the United States 

 ■•• is investigating various fibrous waste materials 

 with a view to their conversion into paper-makers' 

 pulps or " half-stuffs." The Times of October 17 pub- 

 lishes a note giving some results of the experimental 

 treatment of maize stalks, which are pronounced satis- 

 factory. 



The matter is of considerable importance. There 

 exist a certain number of waste materials, such as 

 megasse, cotton-seed hulls, flax and hemp straws of 

 non-textile quality, which contain fibres useful for 

 paper-making, and are available in concentrated areas 

 in adequately large quantity to furnish " half-stuffs " 

 in such volume as to be a serious factor in the deter- 

 mination of the world's supply, and therefore in con- 

 trolling the ultimate cost of paper. 



In considering these sources of supply, it is impoi-- 

 tant to draw a sharp distinction between technical 

 success and commercial success. Ail the above wastes 

 have been, not once, but many times over, success- 

 fully worked up into papers of good quality. But for 

 one reason or another the economic conditions for 

 their industrial development have been lacking. A 

 notable exception to this list of failures is the fibre of 

 the cotton-seed hull. Within the last two years a 

 definite industrial success has been recorded with this 

 fibre, as the result of a treatment which is mainly 

 mechanical. The fibre, purified from the adherent 

 particles of shell, is now on the market under the 

 name of " Virgo fibre." 



Megasse, bamboo, and Para grass are being treated 

 in Trinidad on practical lines ; the half-stuffs and 

 resulting papers are of remarkable quality, and the 

 promises of industrial development are not unfavour- 

 able. 



