484. SECTIONAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
When the lad has learned to read and write, however, his energies are 
diverted, by those who guide him, to (say) the kings of England, in whom he 
has not the slightest interest, except when they fought. From the time he is 
settled in the preparatory, and later in a public school, his natural desire to 
learn something about his surroundings is, except in the playground, repressed. 
When he leaves his school, and afterwards his university, and arrives at what 
I may term the years of indiscretion, most of his ‘wanting to know’ kind of 
feeling has been stamped out of him. He considers its exhibition as almost 
‘bad form.’ 
Again, I plead for early education in the methods of science as a means 
of increasing the usefulness of what I may term the average citizen. The man 
who devotes his leisure hours to work which is included under the term ‘ social 
service ’"—it is good to reflect that the number of such men is increasing—and 
who desires to raise the status of our working men, or to alleviate the poverty 
and unhealthy conditions to which such a large fraction of our people is con- 
demned, must, if his efforts are to have any success, be at all events acquainted 
with the rudiments of sanitary science. He should also be able to understand 
the nature of the industries in which his neighbours are engaged and have 
some idea of the scientific principles on which those industries are founded. 
Philanthropic efforts by zealous men ignorant of such principles may not only 
be unsuccessful but may do positive injury to those whom they desire to benefit. 
The guardians of the poor, the town or county councillors, and more especially 
the members of Parliament, would do far more good and much less mischief 
if their early education had given them some idea of the root causes which 
have brought it to pass that—to quote Professor Perry—‘all the conditions of 
civilisation are being transformed.’ 
Our urgent need is to create an atmosphere in which the growth of natural 
knowledge may be quickened, rather than to increase the number of what I 
may term professional scientific men. We have, I believe, under present 
conditions, a sufficiency of such men. Our universities, faulty as they may 
be in many respects, are turning out larger numbers of eager students more or 
less suitably equipped. The difficulty is that they receive little encouragement, 
financial or otherwise, and therefore drift into employments in which their 
qualifications are of little use. I have known of many such men, eating their 
hearts out, in the—to them—uncongenial employment of teaching in secondary 
schools, with little in the way of promotion to look forward to. 
The scientific ability which this country possesses is being largely wasted 
for want of encouragement. 
If I were asked ‘ How would you create the genial atmosphere you desire? ’ 
my reply would be—I would take the first step in our primary schools. Let 
there be one half-hour per week in which the teacher talks to the children 
and télls them something of what science has done for them. If, for example, 
he knows that an operation has been successfully performed on some child’s 
relative, let him make that a text for a chat about Lister’s work. If the 
school is in a colliery district, let him give a tale or two about Humphry Davy. 
If many of the parents are employed on tramways or electrical works, let him 
say something about the history of the generation of electricity by machinery, 
with a story of the childhood of Faraday. Such matters in capable hands 
could be made as interesting as a fairy tale. If, as some wrongly say, we cannot 
successfully teach these children natural science, anyhow we can bring it to 
pass that when they leave the schcolroom they shall have some idea of what 
science has done for them. The consequent change in the public attitude 
might be slow, but I am confident that in time it would be considerable. 
Such courses would have, I believe, other important consequences. They 
would make the working man more ready in later life to learn something con- 
cerning the origin and nature of the industries by which he earns his daily bread. 
Over certain great engineering works in the United States the following 
sentence is inscribed : ‘No work should be done by a man which can be done 
by a machine.’ There is truth, but there is also danger in this statement. The 
man who has unintelligently to serve a machine, who only knows that he has 
to pull this handle to do one thing and push that handle to do another, tends 
himself to become a machine, possibly an explosive one. 
Working men of former generations had to use their brains as well as their 
hands. Their interest and pride in their work kept them from mental stagna- 
