134 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



which he can afford to be dogmatic and ignores the enormously greater 

 range of phenomena about which science knows little or nothing. This 

 system inevitably breeds in the student and in the general public the 

 impression that nature acts according to certain definite laws and that 

 there is nothing about these laws which is not known to science. In 

 actual fact the more the scientist knows about these laws the more he is 

 impressed with his ignorance and the failure of science to fathom the 

 complexity of nature. Much of the misunderstanding of invention and 

 its difficulties is due to this method of teaching and will endure so long 

 as that method is maintained. If it were possible to teach physical 

 and chemical science historically much could be done to counteract this 

 injurious effect. 



The experimental laboratory tends to modify the dogmatic teaching 

 of the schools because the student there finds out for himself how ex- 

 ceedingly difficult it is to prove experimentally some of the simplest of 

 the physical facts which he learned in the lecture room, and he thus gains 

 a first-hand knowledge of the order of accuracy of physical measurements 

 and of the difficulty in attaining it. Science taught historically would 

 be infinitely more interesting and instructive, but time is the great ob- 

 stacle. In a recent leader in the Times the teaching of the history of 

 science was advocated as a subject for general culture, and comment was 

 also made on similar recommendations emanating from an American 

 writer. Such a study would introduce a better understanding of the 

 science of invention among those who have not given particular attention 

 to it, and the inventor might come to be regarded as a necessary and 

 valuable cog in the wheel of industrial progress and not, as he is too often 

 regarded, as a freak. After all, the inventor is simply trying to make 

 things simpler and easier and safer for his fellow-men, and he is succeeding 

 beyond belief. Surely that object is worthy of recognition and encourage- 

 ment. 



A second possible remedy to encourage invention and minimise its 

 difficulties is by means of legislation. I hesitate to enlarge on this point 

 because the question of patents is a controversial one among scientists, 

 and between inventors and the outside public, but it seems to me anoma- 

 lous that a man who makes an epoch-making invention which is going 

 to revolutionise an industry and add millions to the wealth of the nation 

 receives exactly the same degree of protection for his invention as the 

 man who invents a new kind of shirt button. In the first case the in- 

 vention will take years to develop and may cost thousands of pounds in 

 the process, and by the time it reaches the productive stage the patent 

 may have expired. In the case of the shirt button, a term which I use 

 figuratively, there are no difficulties to overcome, practically no expense, 

 no loss of time and a clear sixteen years' trade monopoly. I know that 

 a patent is granted only for a new method of manufacture which has to 

 be described in the patent specification so that any one skilled in the art 

 may put it into practice at once. In simple inventions which form the 

 subjects of the great majority of patents this is actually the case, but 

 there are undoubtedly cases where what appears to the inventor to be a 

 practical scheme and was honestly described by him as such, proves sub- 

 sequently to be difficult to put into effect on account of technical diffi- 



