I'KKSIDKNTIAI. ADDUKSS IIAUUIS. XXXVii 



brutality would have .shaken the British race out of its 

 comfortal)U', mental inertia. But having been awakened, let 

 us thankfully admit that our rulers are now doing something 

 towards recognizing the all-i)re\'ading iini)ortance of science 

 in the national life. Committees of various learnetl societies 

 have been formed; the British Science Guild is taking action; 

 the Ro\'al College of science has recently presented a petition 

 to Lord Crewe to have men of science adequately recognized, 

 and the Government from early in the War has been con- 

 sulting men of science on a large number of economic problems. 

 Quite recently Sir J. J. Thompson has been elected chairman 

 of an important committee to study the position of science 

 in secondary schools and at the universities and its relations 

 to trades, industries and professions which depend on applied 

 science. 



It cannot be denied that science, as science, has only very 

 recently been allowed to have an independent existence in 

 our national, intellectual system. The time is within the 

 memory of some of us when the attempt to introduce labora- 

 tory teaching into the University of Oxford was met with 

 a furious resistance; and when at length studies in practical 

 chemistry were instituted they were alluded to as "stinks." 

 History w^as repeating itself; for Leo Africanus, writing in 

 the earl}'- part of the 16th century, thus described the chemical 

 society of the learned Arabians at Fez: "There is a most 

 stupid set of men who contaminate themselves with sulphur 

 and other horrible stinks." 



The attitude of Britain's premier University w'as in 

 precisely the same spirit as that of the ex-priest Dupin who, 

 on demanding the execution of Lavoisier, declared: "The 

 republic has no need of chemists". This was in 1794, but 

 fifty years later Oxford made it very clear that she too — 

 and all that she stood for in English life — had no need of 

 chemists or of any other kind of scientist. This was the 



