ADDRESS. 19 
alone, that the learner may hope to catch something at least of the spirit 
of the scientific inquirer. 
This is not the place, nor have I the wish, to plunge into the turmoil 
of controversy ; but, if there be any truth in what I have been urging, 
then they are wrong who think that in the schooling of the young science 
can be used with profit only to train those for whom science will be the 
means of earning their bread. It may be that from the point of view of 
the pedagogic art the experience of generations has fashioned out of the 
older studies of literature an instrument of discipline of unusual power, 
and that the teaching of science is as yet but a rough tool in unpractised 
hands. That, however, is not an adequate reason why scope should not 
be given for science to show the value which we claim for it as an intel- 
lectual training fitted for all sorts and conditions of men. Nor need the 
studies of humanity and literature fear her presence in the schools, for if 
her friends maintain that that teaching is one-sided, and therefore mis- 
leading, which deals with the doings of man only, and is silent about the 
works of Nature, in the sight of which he and _ his doings shrink 
almost to nothing, she herself would be the first to admit that that 
teaching is equally wrong which deals only with the works of Nature and 
says nothing about the doings of man, who is, to us at least, Nature’s 
centre. 
There is yet another general aspect of science on which I would crave 
leave to say a word. In that broad field of human life which we call 
politics, in the struggle not of man with man, but of race with race, 
science works for good. If we look only on the surface it may at first 
sight seem otherwise. In no branch of science has there during these 
later years been greater activity and more rapid progress than in that 
which furnishes the means by which man brings death, suffering, and 
disaster on his fellow-men, If the healer can look with pride on the 
increased power which science has given him to alleviate human suffering 
and ward off the miseries of disease, the destroyer can look with still 
greater pride on the power which science has given him to sweep away 
lives and to work desolation and ruin; while the one has slowly been 
learning to save units, the other has quickly learnt to slay thousands. 
But, happily, the very greatness of the modern power of destruction is 
already becoming a bar to its use, and bids fair—may we hope before 
long ?—wholly to put an end to it; in the words of Tacitus, though in 
another sense, the very preparations for war, through the character which 
science gives them, make for peace. 
Moreover, not in one branch of science only, but in all, there is a deep 
undercurrent of influence sapping the very foundations of all war. As I 
have already urged, no feature of scientific inquiry is more marked than 
the dependence of each step forward on other steps which have been made 
before. The man of science cannot sit by himself in his own cave weaving 
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