622 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
education, one of its many advantages is that boys who go through it are 
disciplined to stand the kicks of the world without too much complaining : 
this is one of the marks of the gentleman. Such training is not easily given in 
the day school and no little difficulty is experienced, I am told, by employers 
of labour nowadays, on account of the way in which the least criticism, even the 
suggestion that there may be a better way of doing a thing, is liable to be 
resented and interpreted as fault-finding by those in their employ. 
If the conclusion at which I have arrived be correct—that science is not 
for the multitude and can never be generally appreciated or even fashionable—in 
view of the part which it is clearly destined to play in education and in daily 
life, on account of its infinite and far-reaching influence upon our well-being 
—the responsibility cast upon the few representatives of science is very great : 
in support of our civilisation and in order that wisdom may prevail more 
generally, they must organise its forces effectively. 
Whilst individuality is the mainspring of scientific progress, collective action 
is required to provide full and proper opportunity for the workers and to 
promote the success of their inquiries. At present, scientific workers are 
organised merely for the purpose of providing means of publishing the results 
of their studies, in no way either for defence or offence: our Societies are 
not effective even for the purposes of debate and criticism. Thus, our chief 
English scientific Society, consisting of some 500 members representative of all 
the various branches of physical and biological science, is little more than 
a rabble—its Fellows are such individualists that scarce half a dozen of us 
can ever agree to work seriously together for a common purpose, and the 
irresistible influence we might exercise if we could be unanimous as to our 
objective is lost to the community. Most unfortunately the Society has no 
influence whatever either on political or on public opinion: it makes no attempt 
either to guide the public or to give dignity and importance to the cause of 
science in the eyes of the community. Its meetings are dull and its belated 
publications by no means represent the scientific activity of its Fellows.. The 
Presidents of the Society have too often been appointed at an age when the 
propagandist spirit is no longer paramount, when they have no particular 
scientific message left in them to deliver. And they occupy the Chair too long : 
this arises chiefly from the fact that however clear each one of us may be that 
individually he is fully competent to hold the office, we all agree in finding 
some objection to every name that is suggested: to overcome this difficulty a 
short tenure is desirable, so that the compliment can be paid and encouragement 
given to the various sciences in turn; no one should be appointed to such an 
office who is more than 60-65 years old, as most of us have used up our ideas and 
have lost our virility by that age. The other officers also hold their positions 
too long but members of the Council have far too short a life—consequently all 
the power is centred in the official body; attempts that have been made to 
organise the whole Society in sections representative of the various sciences have 
always been defeated by the official party. 
Unless our scientific societies can be made more generally effective, if 
scientific workers are incapable of learning lessons from administrative life, it 
stands to reason that the collective interests of Science and of the body scientific 
must remain unrepresented and unvoiced—to the great detriment of progress 
and of the public. ; bee 
Science must be organised, in fact, as other professions are organised, if it 
is to be an effective agent in our civilisation: the problems pressing upon us 
are of such magnitude and of such infinite importance that we can no longer 
afford to be without wisdom. 
‘That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, 
this I call a Tragedy. . . . The miserable fraction of Science which an 
united mankind, in a wide Universe of Nescience, has acquired, why is not this, 
with all diligence, imparted to all?’ This question, asked long ago by our 
Chelsea sage, remains shamefully unanswered. : 4 
Our present system is cunningly devised to keep expert advice at a distance : 
unless a row can be made or action taken which will affect votes, little can be 
done. Persons afflicted with ideas derived from long service and serious study 
