l62 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. XVIII. No. 450 



this direction, and the so-called solid gains associated with 

 practical achievements, will always secure a sufficient num- 

 ber of acute and energetic workers to turn the new territory 

 into arable land and pasture adapted to the demands of the 

 average man. The labor of the agriculturist in rendering 

 soil fertile is, of course, beyond praise ; but it is not the work 

 of the pioneer. As Mr. Huxley eloquently put it, when 

 contrasting the application of science with the advance of 

 science itself, speaking of the things of commercial value 

 which the physical philosopher sometimes discovers : "Great 

 is the rejoicing of those who are benefitted thereby, and, for 

 the moment, science is the Diana of all the craftsmen. But 

 even while the cries of jubilation resound, and the flotsam 

 and jetsam of the tide of investigation is being turned into 

 the wages of workmen and wealth of capitalists, the crest of 

 the wave of scientific investigation is far away on its course 

 over the illimitable ocean of the unknown." 



I have spoken of the work of the national laboratory as 

 devoted to accuracy. It is hardly necessary to say that it 

 will be also the natural custodian of our standards, in a; state 

 fit for use and for comparison with copies sent to be certified. 

 Else perhaps some day our standard ohm may be buried in 

 a brick wall at Westminster, and no one living may be able 

 to recall precisely wliere it is. - 



But, in addition to these main functions, there is another, 

 equally important with them, to which I must briefly refer. 

 There are many experiments which cannot possibly be con- 

 ducted by an individual, because forty or fifty yeai's is not 

 long enough for them. Secular experiments on the proper- 

 ties of materials — the elasticity of metals, for instance; the 

 effect of time on molecular arrangement; the influence of 

 long exposure to light, or to heat, or to mechanical vibra- 

 tion, or to other physical agents. 



Does the permeability of .soft iron decay with age, by rea- 

 son of the gradual cessation of its amperian currents? Do 

 gases cool themselves when adiabatically preserved, by rea- 

 son of imperfect elasticity or too many degrees of freedom of 

 their molecules? Unlikely, but not impossible. Do thermo- 

 electric properties alter with time? And a multitude of otlier 

 experiments which appear specially applicable to substances 

 in the solid state — a state which is more complicated, and 

 has been less investigated, than either the liquid or the gase- 

 ous; a state in which time and past history play an impor- 

 tant part. 



Whichever of these long researches requires to be entered 

 on, a national laboratory, with permanent traditions and a 

 continuous life, is undoubtedly the only appropriate place. 

 At such a place as Glasgow the exceptional magnitude of a 

 present occupant may indeed inspire sufficient piety in a 

 successor to secure the continuance of what has been there 

 begun ; but in most college laboratories, under conditions of 

 migration, interregnum, and a new regime, continuity of 

 investigation is hopeless. 



I have at any rate said enough to indicate the kind of 

 work for which the establishment of a well-furnished labora- 

 tory with fully equipped staff is desirable, and I do not 

 think that we, as a nation, shall be taking our proper share 

 of the highest scientific work of the world until such an in- 

 stitution is started on its career. 



There is only one evil which, so far as I can see, is to be 

 feared from it: if ever it were allowed to impose on outside 

 workers as a central authority, from which infallible dicta 

 were issued, it would be an evil so great that no amount of 

 good work carried on by it could be pleaded as sufficient 

 mitigation. 



If ever by evil chance such an attitude were attempted, it 

 must rest with the workers of the future to see that they 

 permit no such shackles ; for if they are not competent to be 

 independent, and to contemn the voice of authority speaking 

 as mere authority, if their only safeguard lies in the absence 

 of necessity for struggle and effort, they cannot long hope 

 to escape from the futility which surely awaits them in other 

 directions. 



I am thus led to take a wider range, and, leaving tempo- 

 rary and special considerations, to speak of a topic which is 

 as yet beyond the pale of scientific orthodoxy, and which I 

 might, more wisely, leave lying by the roadside. [ will, 

 however, take the risk of introducing a rather ill-favored and 

 disreputable looking stranger to your consideration, in the 

 belief — I might say, in the assured conviction — that he is 

 not all scamp, and that his present condition is as much due 

 to our long-continued neglect as to any inherent incapacity 

 for improvement in the subject. 



I wish, however, strenuously to guard against its being 

 supposed that this association, in its corporate capacity, lends 

 its countenance to, or looks with any favor on, the outcast. 

 What I have to say — and, after all, it will not be much — 

 must rest on my own responsibility. I should be very sorry 

 for any adventitious weight to attach to my observations on 

 forbidden topics from the accident of their being delivered 

 from this chair. The objection to which I have now hinted 

 is the only one that seems to have any just weight, and on 

 all other counts I am willing to incur such amount of oppro- 

 brium as naturally attaches to those who enter on a region 

 where the fires of controversy are not extinct, and in which 

 it is quite impossible, as well as undesirable, for every one 

 to think alike. 



It is but a platitude to say that our clear and conscious 

 aim should always be truth, and that no lower or meaner 

 standard should ever be allowed to obtrude itself before us. 

 Our ancestors fought hard and suffered much for the privi- 

 lege of free and open inquiry, for the right of conducting 

 investigations untrammelled by prejudice and foregone con- 

 clusions, and they were ready to examine into any phenom- 

 enon which presented itself. This attitude of mind is per- 

 haps necessarily less prominent now, when so much knowl- 

 edge has been gained, and when the labors of many individ- 

 uals may be rightly directed entirely to its systematization 

 and a study of its inner ramifications; but it would be a 

 great pity if a too absorbed attention to what has already 

 been acquired, and to the fringe of territory lying immedi- 

 ately adjacent thereto, were to end in our losing the power 

 of raising our eyes and receiving evidence of a totally fresh 

 kind, of perceiving the existence of regions into which the 

 same processes of inquiry as had proved so fruitful might be 

 extended, with results at present incalculable and perhaps 

 wholly unexpected. I myself think that the ordinary pro- 

 cesses of observation and experiment are establishing the ex- 

 istence of such a region ; that, in fact, they have already 

 established the truth of some phenomena not at present con- 

 templated by science, and to which the orthodox man shuts 

 his ears. 



For instance, there is a question whetlier it has or has not 

 been established by direct experiment that a method of 

 communication exists between mind and mind irrespective 

 of the ordinary channels of consciousness and the known 

 organs of sense, and, if so, what is the process. It can 

 hardly be through some unknown sense organ, but it may 

 be by some direct physical influence on the ether, or it may 

 be in some still more subtle manner. Of the process I as yet 



