142 ON SCIENCE AND ART 



perience, with almost every form of society, from the 

 uncivilised savage of Papua and Australia and the civi- 

 lised savages of the slums and dens of the poverty- 

 stricken parts of great cities, to those who, perhaps, are 

 occasionally the somewhat over-civilised members of our 

 upper ten thousand. And I have never found, in any 

 of these conditions of life, a deficiency of something 

 which was attractive. Savagery has its pleasures, I 

 assure you, as well as civilisation, and I may even ven- 

 ture to confess if you will not let a whisper of the 

 matter get back to London, where I am known I am 

 even fain to confess, that sometimes in the din and 

 throng of what is called "a brilliant reception" the vision 

 crosses my mind of waking up from the soft plank which 

 has afforded me satisfactory sleep during the hours of 

 the night, in the bright dawn of a tropical morning, 

 when my comrades were yet asleep, when every sound 

 was hushed, except the little lap-lap of the ripples against 

 the sides of the boat, and the distant twitter of the 

 sea-bird on the reef. And when that vision crosses my 

 mind, I am free to confess I desire to be back in the 

 boat again. So that, if I share with those strange per- 

 sons to whose asserted, but still hypothetical existence 

 I have referred, the want of appreciation of forms of 

 culture other than the pursuit of physical science, all I 

 can say is, that it is, in spite of my constitution, and 

 in spite of my experience, that such should be my fate. 

 But now let me turn to another point, or rather to 

 two other points, with which I propose to occupy my- 

 self. How far does the experience of the last fourteen 

 years justify the estimate which I ventured to put for- 

 ward of the value of scientific culture, and of the share 

 the increasing share which it must take in ordi- 

 nary education? Happily, in respect to that matter, you 

 need not rely upon my testimony. In the last half- 



