924 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1069 



the poorest boy at every turn, and yet we edu- 

 cate him in such a manner that he shall enter the 

 world as ignorant of the existence of the methods 

 and facts of science as the day he was born. The 

 modern world is full of artillery: and we turn our 

 children out to do battle in it equipped with the 

 shield and sword of an ancient gladiator. 



Posterity will cry shame cm us if we do not rem- 

 edy this deplorable state of things. Nay, if we 

 live twenty years longer, our own consciences will 

 cry shame on us. 



These words were uttered in 1861. Now, 

 after more than fifty years, not twenty, 

 merely, we still go naked and unashamed 

 of our ignorance : seemingly, there is no 

 conscience within us to cry shame on us. 

 I have no hesitation in saying that, at home, 

 at all events, whatever your state here may 

 be, we have done but little through edu- 

 cation to remedy the condition of public 

 ignorance which Huxley deplored. In 

 point of fact, he altogether underrated the 

 power of the forces of ignorance and in- 

 difference; he failed to foresee that these 

 were likely to grow rather than to fall into 

 abeyance. In England, what I will venture 

 to term the Oxford spirit still reigns 

 supreme — the spirit of the literary class — 

 the medieval spirit of obscurantism, which 

 favors a backward rather than a forward 

 outlook. 



"Wherein was Huxley out in his forecast ? 

 In 1861 the claim of science was already 

 strong, but think what has been done since 

 that time — what we can now assert of its 

 conquests ! In the interval, even within my 

 recollection, the whole of our ironclad fleet 

 has been created, rifled cannon, smokeless 

 powder and dynamite have been introduced, 

 and this last, in combination with the dis- 

 covery of the causes of yellow fever and 

 malaria, has made the Panama Canal pos- 

 sible, an entirely revolutionary work of 

 man's interfering hands. The Great 

 Eastern, which could not be launched at 

 first on account of her size — as a lad, I saw 

 her sticking in the stocks — was always a 



failure, because she was outside the fashion 

 of her time, yet has given rise to a host of 

 ocean leviathans of far larger size; the 

 steam-turbine has entered into rivalry with 

 the reciprocating steam-engine; cold stor- 

 age has revolutionized ocean transport, so 

 that fresh food can be carried from this 

 continent to remote England and Europe. 

 Electricity, then a puling infant, is grown 

 to giant size; not only have we deep-sea 

 telegraphy and mechanical speech in the 

 form of the phonograph and telephone, but 

 wireless communication, the electric light, 

 electric transmission of power, electric trac- 

 tion — even the waterfalls of the world are 

 tamed through the turbine and made sub- 

 servient to our will for motive purposes or 

 in the production of temperatures border- 

 ing on those of solar heat, by means of 

 which, too, we can draw food for plants, at 

 will, from our atmosphere, by combining its 

 constituents into the form of a fertilizer. 

 The use of oil-fuel in the internal-combus- 

 tion engine has been made possible and, in 

 a few short years, our streets have been 

 cleared of horse conveyances and crowded 

 with motor- vehicles ; such engines are com- 

 ing into use everywhere and have enabled 

 us successfully to perform the feat which 

 Daedalus vainly attempted — we even talk of 

 flying from New York to London, across the 

 vast Atlantic, to spend the week-end. The 

 cyanide process has been introduced into 

 gold-mining and is enabling us to unearth 

 a fabulous wealth ; a vast array of gorgeous 

 colors has been produced, and Dame Nature 

 so outwitted that we make indigo and mad- 

 der out of the tar which in old days was put 

 only upon fences; Pasteur's work has made 

 Listerism possible, so that nothing is now 

 beyond the surgeon's art and bacteriology 

 is become the handmaid of preventive medi- 

 cine and sanitary science; not only paper, 

 but a silk is made artificially from wood- 

 pulp and the finest of scents are conjured 



