TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 613 
The ‘Daily Telegraph’ alone of the Conservative papers retains the ser- 
vices of an eminent scientific writer but even Science cannot make a 
summer of one swallow. Editors who do not appreciate a subject themselves 
are not likely to suppose that others will care for it. Lastly, I am told 
by friends high up in the publishing trade that there is no demand for readable 
books on Science—only text-books sell and provided always that they are 
written on conventional lines, so that their contents can be memorised. Never- 
theless, I have hopes, since Messrs. Dent have issued Faraday’s ‘Electro- 
Chemical Researches’ as one of the shilling volumes in their wonderful ‘ Every- 
| aE ’ series; this is the one promising speck of white cloud on an otherwise black 
orizon. 
The spirit of the age, in fact, is in no way scientific, though ease and comfort 
are now provided on an unprecedented scale through the agency of Science, the 
engineer acting as chief interpreter. The Churches will have none of it and 
almost glory in their ignorance. 
Why is this? Why was Huxley so out in his forecast made in 1861? Why 
do we still go naked and unashamed of our ignorance of ‘Science’? 
One main reason is that the party in power is unscientific; but at bottom, 
I believe, the difficulty is a far greater one and probably innate in our dis- 
position. It cannot well be supposed that man is by nature disposed to be 
scientific. The scientific fraternity, at any time, are and probably always will 
be but a small party—a set of freaks, sports from the multitude. They think 
and talk in a language of their own, as musicians do. The multitude may listen 
to them at times, with more or less of pleasure, as they do to music; but it is 
impossible and probably always will be impossible for the many to appreciate 
the methods and results of the scientific worker. Science, in reality, is a form 
of art and true artists are never numerous; moreover, it is admitted that they 
are born—like Topsy, they must grow, for they are not to be made in numbers. 
Our schools are for the most part in literary hands: and it would almost appear 
that literary and scientific interests are antagonistic, so unsympathetic has been 
the reception accorded to Science by the schools. 
Parenthetically, let me here deny the accusation not unfrequently made by 
literary writers that the scientific fraternity are trying to oust literary studies 
from the schools. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are always 
craving for better literary training; our complaint is that the methods and 
subject-matter of literary training are far from being properly developed and, 
especially, that English is neglected in the schools. Huxley stated the real 
situation in saying ‘Science and literature are not two things but two sides of 
the same thing.’ Our attitude and the difference between the two kinds of 
training could not be better defined than it is in the following passage from one 
of his lectures :— 
‘Tf I insist unweariedly, nay fanatically, upon the importance of physical 
science as an educational agent, it is because the study of any branch of 
Science, if properly conducted, appears to me to fill up a void left by all other 
means of education. I have the greatest respect and love for literature; nothing 
would grieve me more than to see literary training other than a very prominent 
branch of education: indeed, I wish that real literary discipline were far more 
attended to than it is; but I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that there is a 
vast difference between men who have kad a purely literary and those who have 
had a sound scientific training. 
‘Seeking for the cause of this difference, I imagine I can find it in the fact 
that, in the world of letters, learning and knowledge are one and books are the 
source of both; whereas in Science, as in life, learning and knowledge are 
distinct and the study of things and not of books is the source of the latter. 
‘All that literature has to bestow may be obtained by reading and by 
practical exercise in writing and speaking; but I do not exaggerate when I say 
that none of the best gifts of Science are to be won by these means. On the 
contrary, the great benefit which a scientific education bestows, whether as 
training or as knowledge, is dependent upon the extent to which the mind of 
the student is brought into immediate contact with facts—upon the degree to 
which he learns the habit of appealing directly to Nature and of acquiring 
through his senses concrete images of those properties of things which are and 
