480 SECTIONAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
It is possible, however, that the advocates of natural science have, in their 
anxiety to secure support, unduly ignored the educational and ethical value 
of training in scientific method, and, as a consequence, its importance as one 
of the highest exercises of the human intelligence has been insufficiently appre- 
ciated by the public. In brief, natural science has been, and still is, regarded 
as an utilitarian and vocational, rather than as an ethical and educational 
subject. 
What we read stories such as those of the persecutions of Galileo or Bruno, 
we thank God we live in more enlightened times. Have we, however, any 
right to be completely satisfied? Have we entirely freed ourselves from the 
superstitions and prejudices of the past? 
I doabt if any man who dispassionately considers our present educational 
system can honestly answer in the affirmative. The burden of tradition is 
heavy upon us, and the more or less hidden hand of the expert in the obsolete 
still retards our educational progress. 
In the Middle Ages, if we group men by their occupations—that is, if we 
separate them by vertical planes rather than by the horizontal ones indicating 
social conditions—we, broadly speaking, find three classes only :— 
1. The men who fought ; 
2. The men who made things (including labourers as well as craftsmen) ; 
3. The men who studied ; 
the last class being chiefly found within the monasteries. 
Many men belonged to both the first and second classes, but very few to both 
the second and third. Hence arose the prevalent belief that he who did things 
could not possibly be a student, the natural corollary being that no student 
should do things, he should only read and talk about them. ‘This view has 
been somewhat modified in recent times, but still, deep down in the minds of 
our teachers, with, of course, some brilliant exceptions, there remains the 
conviction that anything which is useful is probably non-educational. 
I recently came across an interesting example. The following quotation is 
from the introduction to a scholarly book by Prof. Weekby, entitled ‘ Surnames,’ 
which was published in 1916. Referring to his own work, he says: ‘ This 
may seem of little practical importance at a time when our leaders of science—a 
word which used to mean knowledge—are exhorting us in unattractive English 
to do away with this ‘‘old lumber of Greek and Latin,’ and bend all our 
efforts on transforming the rising generation into a nation of super-plumbers.’ 
Here the exasperating mental attitude to which I have made reference is 
very evident. It assumes that our only object in teaching science is to raise 
a ‘super-plumber,’ whatever that may be; and, according to the writer, it 
follows that what we teach him cannot, if he utilises it, be science in the 
true acceptation of that term. 
It is unnecessary to multiply examples. Everyone conversant with public 
school masters, university dons, or school inspectors could multiply them 
without stint. 
I now propose to set before you a hard task. I ask you to forget that 
discoveries in pure science have ever served an utilitarian or industrial purpose. 
Such a task must be a specially difficult one to members of an Association in 
which discoveries have been announced which have not only undoubtedly 
increased the industrial prosperity of this kingdom, but which also, but for 
the ignorance and indifference of our legislators concerning all scientific matters, 
would have removed many of the social evils which now disturb the welfare 
of the commonwealth. 
In fact, I ask you, for the purposes of discussion with the superior persons 
to whom I have referred, to unite in the toast of a certain Society, ‘ Here’s to 
science, pure and undefiled, and may it never be a ha’porth of use to anyone.’ 
Curiously enough, one may remark in passing, the spirit of that toast is 
precisely that in which every great discovery which has ultimately proved of 
service to mankind has been accomplished. Newton, when enunciating the 
law of inverse squares; Faraday, when investigating the phenomena of electro- 
magnetic induction; Maxwell, when establishing the theory that light was an 
electro-magnetic disturbance, were not thinking of the ‘ super-plumber’ or 
his works. 
