September 25, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



387 



relation to producing and carrying power. 

 AVith the winning of mineral wealth and 

 the production of machinery in other coun- 

 tries, and cheap and i-apid transit between 

 nations, our superiority as depending upon 

 first use of vast material resources was re- 

 duced. Science, which is above all things 

 cosmopolitan — planetary, not national — in- 

 ternationalizes such resources at once. In 

 every market of the world 



" things of beauty, things of use, 

 Which one fair planet can produce, 

 Brought from under every star," 



were soon to be found. 



Hence the first great effect of the gen- 

 eral progress of science was relatively to 

 diminish the initial supremacy of Britain 

 due to the first use of material resources, 

 which indeed was the real source of our na- 

 tional wealth and place among the nations. 



The unfortunate thing was that, while 

 the foundations of our superiority depend- 

 ing upon oitr material resources were be- 

 ing thus sapped by a cause which was be- 

 yond our control, our statesmen and our 

 universities were blind leaders of the blind, 

 and our other asset, our mental resources, 

 which was within our control, was culpably 

 neglected. 



So little did the bulk of our statesmen 

 know of the part science was playing in the 

 modern world and of the real basis of the 

 nation's activities, that they imagined polit- 

 ical and fiscal problems to be the only mat- 

 ters of importance. Nor, indeed, are we 

 very much better of¥ to-day. In the im- 

 portant disctissions recently raised by Mr. 

 Chamberlain, next to nothing has been 

 said of the effect of the progress of science 

 on prices. The whole course of the modern 

 world is attributed to the presence or ab- 

 sence of taxes on certain commodities in 

 certain countries. The fact that the great 

 fall in the price of food-stuffs in England 

 did not come till some thirty or forty years 

 after the removal of the corn dutv between 



1847 and 1849 gives them no pause; for 

 them new inventions, railways and steam- 

 ships ai-e negligible quantities; the vast in- 

 crease in the world's wealth in free trade 

 and protected countries alike comes merely 

 according to them in response to some polit- 

 ical shibboleth. 



We now know, from what lias occurred in 

 other States, that if our Mini-sters had been 

 more wise and our universities more numer- 

 ous and efficient, our menial resources 

 would have been developed by improve- 

 ments in educational method, by the intro- 

 duction of science into schools, and, more 

 important than all the rest, by the teaching 

 of science by experiment, observation and 

 research, and not from books. It is because 

 this was not done that we have fallen be- 

 hind other nations in properly applying 

 science to industry, so that our applica- 

 tions of science to industry are relatively 

 less important than they were. But this 

 is by no means all ; we have lacked the 

 strengthening of the national life produced 

 by fostering the scientific spirit among all 

 classes, and along all lines of the nation's 

 activity ; many of the responsible authorities 

 know little and care less about science; we 

 have not learned that it is the duty of a 

 State to organize its forces as carefully for 

 peace as for war; that universities and 

 other teaching centres are as important as 

 battleships or big battalions; are, in fact, 

 es.sential parts of a modern State's machin- 

 ery, and as such to be equally aided and as 

 efficiently organized to secure its future 

 well being. 



Now the objects of the British Associa- 

 tion as laid down by its founders seventy- 

 two years ago are "To give a stronger im- 

 pulse and a more systematic direction to 

 scientific inquirj'— to promote the inter- 

 course of those who cultivate science in dif- 

 ferent parts of the British Empire with one 

 another and with foreign philosophers— to 

 obtain a more general attention to the ob- 



