xlviii PROCEEDINGS. 



diplomatists and lawyers? Why should it be so entirely 

 correct to be paid for legal opinion, and such "bad form" 

 to be remunerated for scientific advice? Because, you 

 may rely, the Law is an ancient, respectable profession, 

 and science is so modern that it is not a profession at all. 

 But this mediaeval state of affairs cannot go on indefinitely; 

 it was all very well for the day when there was no science 

 to foster, and men quarrelled so much that lawyers were 

 kept very busy, but now "nous avons change tous cela" — 

 or at least the earlier part of it. One need not here and 

 now draw up an exhaustive list of the duties of the Minister 

 of Science, but might merely remark that much that falls 

 under the supervision of the Home Office could be transferred 

 to the Department of Science. Had there been such a 

 department, Edward Jenner, for instance, would not have 

 had to struggle against every kind of obstacle and mis- 

 representation for as long a time as he did, or have had to 

 wait as long as he had for the official recognition of what 

 he had done for suffering humanity. Not from his own 

 private house but from a Government department would 

 the vaccine have gone forth to eager Europe. He truly 

 called himself "The vaccine clerk of the whole world." 



The first concern of the Science Office would be the place 

 of science in the schools of the Empire. And here we come 

 up againts the still burning question of the rival claims of 

 Science and the Classics. Of course it ought to be per- 

 fectly possible to instruct boys in as much of Greek and 

 Latin as would make them know the origin of the words in 

 English derived from those languages, without necessarily 

 making the boys read entire Greek and Latin authors in 

 the original. The practice in the past of educating boys as 

 though they were all going to be teachers of the classics is 

 analogous to the teaching of Physiology to medical students 

 as though they were allgoing to be professional physiologists. 

 A very small minority of boys need to be able to write Latin 



