August 26, 1909] 



NATURE 



249 



progress of science, but also help to strengthen the bonds 

 which bind together the different portions of the King's 

 Dominions. 



This year, for the third time in a quarter of a century, 

 we are meeting in Canada. As if to give us an object 

 Jesson in the growth of Empire, you in Winnipeg took 

 .the opportunity at our first meeting in Canada in 1884 

 .to invite our members to visit Manitoba and see for them- 

 selves the development of the Province at that time. 

 Those who were fortunate enough to be your guests then 

 as well as now are confronted with a change which must 

 seem to them unexampled and almost incredible. Great 

 .cities have sprung up, immense areas have been converted 

 from prairies to prosperous farms, flourishing industries 

 have been started, and the population has quadrupled. .»\s 

 the President of a scientific association I hope I may be 

 pardoned if I point out that even the enterprise and energy 

 ■of your people and the richness of your country would 

 ihave been powerless to effect this change without the 

 resources placed at their disposal by the labours of men 

 ■of science. 



The eminence of my predecessors in the chair at the 

 meetings of the British Association in Canada makes my 

 task this evening a difficult one. The meeting at Montreal 

 was presided over by Lord Rayleigh, who, like Lord 

 Kelvin, his colleague in the chair of Section A at that 

 meeting, has left the lion's mark on every department 

 lof physics, and has shown that, vast as is the empire 

 of physics, there are still men who can extend its frontiers 

 in all of the many regions under its sway. It has been 

 my lot to succeed Lord Rayleigh in other offices as 

 well as this, and I know how difficult a man he is to 

 follow. 



The President of the second meeting in Canada — that 

 ■held in 1897 at Toronto — was Sir John Evans, one of 

 those men who, like Boyle, Cavendish, Darwin, Joule, and 

 Huggins, have, from their own resources and without the 

 aid derived from official positions or from the universities, 

 made memorable contributions to science : such men form 

 one of the characteristic features of British science. May 

 we not hope that, as the knowledge of science and the 

 Interest taken in it increase, more of the large number 

 of men of independent means in our country may be found 

 working for the advancement of science, and thereby 

 rendering services to the community no less valu.able than 

 the political, philanthropic, and social work at which many 

 of them labour with so much zeal and success? 



I can, however, claim to have some experience of, at 

 any rate, one branch of Canadian science, for it has been 

 my privilege to receive at the Cavendish Laboratory many 

 students from your universities. Some of these have been 

 ■holders of what are known as the 1S51 scholarships. 

 These scholarships are provided from the surplus of the 

 Great Exhibition of 1851, and are placed at the disposal 

 of most of the younger universities in the British Empire, 

 to enable students to devote themselves for two or three 

 years to original research in various branches of science. 

 T have had many opportunities of seeing the work of 

 these scholars, and I should like to put on record my 

 opinion that tliere is no educational endowment in the 

 country which has done or is doing better work. 



I have had, as I said, the privilege of having as pupils 

 students from your universities as well as from those of 

 New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, and have 

 thus had opportunities of comparing the effect on the 

 ■best men of the educational system in force at your 

 universities with that which prevails in the older English 

 universities. Well, as the result, I have come to the con- 

 clusion that there is a good deal in the latter system 

 which you have been wise not to imitate. The chief evil 

 from which we at Cambridge suffer and which you have 

 avoided is, I am convinced, the excessive competition for 

 scholarships which confronts our students at almost every 

 stage of their education. ^You may form some estimate 

 of the prevalence of these scholarships if I tell you that 

 the colleges in the University of Cambridge alone give 

 more than 315,000/. a year in scholarships to under- 

 graduates, and I suppose the case is much the same at 

 Oxford. The result of this is that preparation for these 

 scholarships dominates the education of the great majority 

 of the cleverer boys who come to these universities, and 

 NO. 207S, VOL. 81] 



indeed in some quarters it seems to be held that the chief 

 duty of a schoolmaster, and the best test of his efficiency, 

 is to make his boys get scholarships. The preparation 

 for the scholarship too often means that about two years 

 before the examination the boy begins to specialise, and 

 from the age of sixteen does little else than the subject, 

 be it mathematics, classics, or natural science, for which 

 he wishes to get a scholarship ; then, on entering the 

 university, he spends three or four years studying the 

 same subject before he takes his degree, when his real 

 life-work ought to begin. How has this training fitted 

 him for this work? I will take the case in which the 

 system might perhaps be expected to show to greatest 

 advantage, when his work is to be original research in 

 the subject he has been studying. He has certainly 

 acquired a very minute acquaintance with his subject — ■ 

 indeed, the knowledge possessed by some of the students 

 trained under this system is quite remarkable, much greater 

 than that of any other students I have ever met. But 

 though he has acquired knowledge, the effect of study- 

 ing one subject, and one subject only, for so long a time 

 is too often to dull his enthusiasm for it, and he begins 

 research with much of his early interest and keenness 

 evaporated. Now there is hardly any quality more 

 essential to success in research than enthusiasm. Research 

 is difficult, laborious, often disheartening. The carefully 

 designed apparatus refuses to work, it develops defects 

 which may take months of patient work to rectify, the 

 results obtained may appear inconsistent with each other 

 and with every known law of Nature, sleepless nights and 

 laborious days may seem only to make the confusion 

 more confounded, and there is nothing for the student to 

 do but to take for his motto " It's dogged as does it," 

 and plod on, comforting himself with the assurance that 

 when success does come, the difficulties he has overcome 

 will increase the pleasure — one of the most exquisite men 

 can enjoy — of getting some conception which will make 

 all that was tangled, confused, and contradictory clear and 

 consistent. Unless he has enthusiasm to carry him on 

 when the prospect seems almost hopeless and the labour 

 and strain incessant, the student may give up his task 

 and take to easier, though less important, pursuits. 



I am convinced that no greater evil can be done to a 

 young man than to dull his enthusiasm. In a very con- 

 siderable experience of students of physics beginning re- 

 search, I have met with more — many more — failures from 

 lack of enthusiasm and determination than from any lack 

 of knowledge or of what is usually known as cleverness. 



This continual harping from an early age on one sub- 

 ject, which is so efficient in quenching enthusiasm, is 

 much encouraged by the practice of the colleges to give 

 scholarships for proficiency in one subject alone. I went 

 through a list of the scholarships awarded in the Uni- 

 versity of Cambridge last winter, and, though there were 

 202 of them, I could only find three cases in which it was 

 specified that the award was made for proficiency in more 

 than one subject. 



The premature specialisation fostered by the preparation 

 for these scholarships injures the student by depriving 

 him of adequate literary culture, while when it extends, 

 as it often does, to specialisation in one or two branches 

 of science, it retards the progress of science by tending 

 to isolate one science from another. The boundaries 

 between the sciences are arbitrary, and tend to disappear 

 as science progresses. The principles of one science often 

 find most striking and suggestive illustrations in the 

 phenomena of another. Thus, for example, the physicist 

 finds in astronomy that effects he has observed in the 

 laboratory are illustrated on the grand scale in the sun 

 and stars. No better illustration of this could be given 

 than Prof. Hale's recent discovery of the Zeeman effect 

 in the light from sun-spots ; in chemistry, too, the physicist 

 finds in the behaviour of whole series of reactions illustra- 

 tions of the great laws of thermodynamics, while if he 

 turns to the biological sciences he is confronted by 

 problems, mostly unsolved, of unsurpassed interest. Con- 

 sider for a moment the problem presented by almost any 

 plant — the characteristic and often exquisite detail of 

 flower, leaf, and habit — and remember that the mechanism 

 which controls this almost infinite complexity was once 

 contained in a seed perhaps hardly large enough to be 



