18 REPORT — 1902. 



men go to the technical schools. We have to begin at the beginning : we 

 have to train the population from the first to think correctly and logically, 

 to deal at first hand with facts, and to evolve, each one for himself, the 

 solution of a problem put before him, instead of learning by rote the solu- 

 tion given by somebody else. There are plenty of chemists turned out, 

 even by our Universities, who would be of no use to Bayer & Co. They 

 are chockfull of formulae, they can recite theories, and they know text- 

 books by heart ; but put them to solve a new problem, freshly arisen in 

 the laboratory, and you will find that their learning is all dead. It has 

 not become a vital part of their mental equipment, and they are floored 

 by the first emergence of the unexpected. The men who escape this 

 mental barrenness are men who were somehow or other taught to think 

 long before they went to the university. To my mind, the really appalling 

 thing is not that the Germans have seized this or the other industry, or 

 even that they may have seized upon a dozen industries. It is that the 

 German population has reached a point of general training and specialised 

 equipment which it will take us two generations of hard and intelligently 

 directed educational work to attain. It is that Germany possesses a 

 national weapon of precision which must give her an enormous initial 

 advantage in any and every contest depending upon disciplined and 

 methodised intellect. 



History of Cold and the Absolute Zero. 



It was Tyndall's good fortune to appear before you at a moment when 

 a fruitful and comprehensive idea was vivifying the whole domain of 

 scientific thought. At the present time no such broad generalisation 

 presents itself for discussion, while on the other hand the number of 

 specialised studies has enormously increased. Science is advancing in so 

 broad a front by the efibrts of so great an army of workers that it would 

 be idle to attempt within the limits of an address to the most indulgent of 

 audiences anything like a survey of chemistry alone. But I have thought 

 it might be instructive, and perhaps not uninteresting, to trace briefly in 

 broad outline the development of that branch of study with which my 

 own labours have been recently more intimately connected — a study which 

 I trust I am not too partial in thinking is as full of philosophical interest as 

 of experimental difficulty. The nature of heat and cold must have en- 

 gaged thinking men from the very earliest dawn of speculation upon the 

 external world ; but it will suffice for the present purpose if, disregarding 

 ancient philosophers and even medieval alchemists, we take up the subject 

 where it stood after the great revival of learning, and as it was regarded 

 by the father of the inductive method. That this was an especially 

 attractive subject to Bacon is evident from the frequency with which 

 he recurs to it in his different works, always with lamentation over the 

 inadequacy of the means at disposal for obtaining a considerable degree 

 of cold. Thus in the chapter in the Natural History, ' Sylva Sylvarum,' 

 entitled ' Experiments in consort touching the production of cold,' he says. 



