SCIENCE, EDUCATION, AND ARISTOCRACY. 483 



exercised by priests and sacerdotal parties to the philosophical class, 

 but he was obliged, in constructing his theory, to form a sort of cor- 

 porate hierarchy and invest them with the very powers taken from 

 those whom he had so strongly denounced. In so doing, as Mill in an 

 early book had said, he had furnished " a monumental warning " to 

 those who dealt with such matters. Science itself, however speculative 

 a range it might take, could not naturally be pregnant with the tender 

 and softer feelings unless it was coupled with altogether different 

 principles, which would enable it to be applied to the affairs of man- 

 kind. Look back for a moment on the different forms which science 

 had sometimes taken. In the middle ages " Italian cruelty " was a 

 proverb. Italy, which could then count more men of science* than the 

 rest of Europe, was not hindered on that account from also claiming 

 a monopoly of cruelty. Chaucer threw out the same sneer at scien- 

 tific men of his day, and during that time there arose that curious and 

 mysterious combination of poisoners in Europe who united science 

 with no tenderness of heart. Science, therefore, he thought, was no 

 safeguard or guarantee of itself for tenderness and affection, but when 

 joined with something higher in the human system it would call into 

 play all the highest qualities of the mind, and assert an intellectual 

 and moral domain in which the greatest of men could serve. 



The speech delivered on December 6, 1873, by the Earl of Carnar- 

 von, at the Birkbeck Institution, is a very significant indication of the 

 progress of public opinion, at all events in one direction, during the 

 last half-century. Fifty years have passed away since the late Dr. Birk- 

 beck, aided by a small band of the ultra-Radicals of his day, founded 

 the Mechanics' Institute in Southampton Buildings. The work was 

 begun and carried on amid the howls, and execrations, and sinister 

 prophecies of those " upper " classes whose lordly representative came 

 down, a week ago, to smile his approval upon its success, and to hal- 

 low it with a patrician benediction. No words were too hard for the 

 revolutionist and heretic whose profanity had reached such a pitch 

 that he dared to encourage working-men to learn something besides 

 the Church Catechism. Here was a man — and, strange to say, a gen- 

 tleman — acting on the assumption that the horny-handed and ill-smell- 

 ing laborer had a mind which ought to be cultivated, had a life which 

 ought to be lived for some other purpose than that of making his 

 " betters " comfortable. Worse still, he did not hold it as a theory to 

 be dilated upon on Sundays from a pulpit, and to be realized on 

 the other side of the grave ; but, to the horror of the Newdegates 

 and Tomnoddies of 1823, he actually went and set up an institution in 

 which science — " hard, abstract science " — might be taught to the 

 " great unwashed." No wonder that a noble-minded aristocracy held 



