238 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1917, 
he devoted himself to some other pursuit to earn his bread and devoted his 
leisure to research. 
It was only indirectly, by trying gradually to educate educationists, 
Gererume departments, and the public, that he could see any hope for the 
uture. 
Twelve or fourteen years ago some of us thought that the nature-study 
movement would do a greal deal, but it is not everyone who would take the 
trouble to understand what was meant. Mr. Fagg said of nature-study yesterday 
that it was responsible for much. To it is due to a great extent the new teaching 
of geography upon which he commented. Regional Surveys are but one branch 
of the nature-study which we advocated. A great object was to get plastic minds 
away from books until these are really useful, and the burden of any bad 
results which may have accrued lies on those who looked upon nature-study 
as a new subject or a poor kind of elementary didactic science. 
The greatest triumph achieved by the nature-study movement was the decision 
of the Eton College authorities to accept nature-study in the entrance examination 
as an alternative to Latin verse. 
Another habit of human nature akin to buying in the cheapest market, or 
possibly the same one in another guise, is the wish to get as much as you can 
for your money, and I never heard that any boys from the regular preparatory 
schools offered nature-study instead of Latin verses, their schoolmasters knowing 
that the latter would count for more in the long run if not immediately. 
This brings me to consider some of the reasons why science has not 
advanced as quickly as it might in the past. What we may perhaps still 
call the ruling classes are brought up as ignorant of science as they often are 
of business. They cannot help looking down upon it, or ignoring it, because 
they do not understand ,it. They also have been accustomed to see all the 
most successful boys in their schools put to learn Latin and Greek, leaving 
the others who counted for little to turn to scientific pursuits. 
There is one class of schools which has been an outstanding exception, 
though unfortunately they do not rank with Eton, Harrow, and Winchester. 
I mean the Friends’ Schools, where natural-history pursuits enter into the cur- 
riculum and take the place to some extent of games. Bootham School had 
a natural-history magazine eighty or more years ago, when the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science came into existence. It was 
this school] which produced men like Silvanus Thompson, a scientific man of 
the first calibre as a physicist, a clever artist, a polished writer, 
and an ardent lover of Nature. It was he who gave the finest Presidential 
address that I remember to the South-Eastern Union of Scientific Societies 
at Woolwich. He took for his text two proverbial sayings, one of 
which, usually misquoted, Dr. Bather mentioned yesterday, ‘a little learning 
is a dangerous thing’ and ‘a cobbler should stick to his last.” These Professor 
Silvanus Thompson, in his fascinating way, proceeded to show were fallacies, 
finishing his argument with an instance of a cobbler who lived in Woolwich, 
where he was speaking, who invented the electro-magnet, which is used in 
millions of instruments all the world over. 
Another reason why scientific people have been looked down upon is because 
many of those who have been successful in science, like their classical brethren, 
are, to use the late Lord Avebury’s words, applied to the latter, only half- 
educated. They have often picked up their knowledge in evening classes 
after the business of the day was done, and they have not had time to acquire 
what we may term literary culture. They do not as a rule write with the 
style that they might, and their social position originally is not of the highest. 
Still, as the President said yesterday, a knowledge of English is lacked by very 
many of all classes, and one of the column-editors of The Field once teld 
me that the writing of many of our country gentlemen was appalling. He 
had had very many years’ experience of it. 
Then, again, if the classical scholar looks down on the scientific one, the 
same is true of the business-man. Scientific people, in the past at any rate, 
have worked for nothing. In the commercial eye a man who does this is a 
fool, and what you can get for nothing is not worth having. 
It is rather a pity that any labour for love should cease, but the man who 
has a scientific education should get something on his investment, and I feel 
