February, 1910.] 



139 



MiscellaneouSt 



attraction and inspiration for man, and 

 man will always think with gratitude 

 and affection of their authors ; but it 

 is possible to overdo a thing, and this 

 talk of the humanities and humane 

 studies has been overdone. After all, 

 a live dog is better than a dead lion — 

 but in this case we are dealing with a 

 living lion. 



It is ridiculous to say nowadays that 

 the study of humanities consists solely 

 of the study of the writings and philo- 

 sophy of the ancients ; to take that 

 view is to take the view of the school- 

 men ; the death-blow to which was given 

 by Bacon and Bruno. 



We have got beyond that ; we claim 

 that the true study of the humanities 

 is a far wider thing — it is the study of 

 the stupendous mechanism of the uni- 

 verse of which man forms a part, and 

 the understanding of which is necessary 

 for his happiness. That is the true 

 humanity of which the other forms only 

 a small portion. The time is coming 

 when the principal preoccupation of 

 man shall be the gradual disclosure of 

 this mechanism and his principal delight 

 the contemplation of its beauty. For 

 remember what Plato himself said : the 

 whole of nature, so far as it really 

 exists, is a revelation of God. 



In spite of the work and writings of 

 such men as Bacon and Bruno in the 

 end of the sixteenth century, the pro- 

 gress of science was at first but slow 

 and the workers few. We have, of 

 course, the immortal achievements of 

 Newton and Harvey, and the foundation 

 of the Royal Society, and the tremend- 

 ous outburst of scholarship as typified 

 in this country by Bentley and his co- 

 workers ; but the eighteenth century 

 was, on the whole, characterised by 

 intellectual quiescence both in scientific 

 output and in literary creation. The 

 quiescence was apparent rather than 

 real. To borrow a metaphor from the 

 garden, though there was little growth 

 above ground, active root formation 

 was going on. Linnaeus (1707-1778) was 

 at work in Sweden creating the frame- 

 work which rendered future work in 

 botany and zoology possible ; Buffon in 

 France was cautiously feeling his way 

 towards a theory of organic evolution ; 

 Henry Cavendish (1731-1810), Joseph 

 Priestly (1733-1804), and Antoine La- 

 voisier (1743-94), were laying the found- 

 ation of modern chemistry ; Albrecht 

 von Haller (1707-77), Kaspar Friederick 

 Wolff (1733-94), and John Hunter (1728-93), 

 those of anatomy and physiology. The 

 spade-work of these men, together 

 with the improvement of the micros- 

 cope, was necessary for the great out- 



burst of scientific investigation which 

 characterised the ninteenth century. 

 Ushered in by the work of Cuvier 

 (1769-1832), Lamarck (1744-1829), St. Hilaire 

 (1772-1844), in biology, Thomas Young 

 (1773-1829), Laplace (1749-1827), Volta 

 (1745-1827), Oarnot (1758-1823), in physics, 

 it was adorned in its middle and latter 

 period by the names of Davy, Faraday, 

 Dalton, Arago, Rochard, Owen, Darwin, 

 Lyell, John Muller, Agassiz, Helmholtz, 

 Stokes, Kelvin, and Pasteur. 



The advance of knowledge is yearly 

 becoming more rapid ; if its steps were 

 slow and hesitating in the seventeenth 

 and eighteenth centuries, and if it 

 quickened to a rapid walk in the nine- 

 teenth, we now hear the sound of a 

 trot, which at the end of the century 

 will be a gallop, and as the centuries 

 succeed one another its pace will become 

 even faster. Where will it lead us, 

 and what will be the upshot for man ? 



But it is no part of my purpose to-day 

 to give you an historical summary of 

 scientific progress. The point I wish to 

 illustrate is the vast increase in the 

 scientific army and in the results achiev- 

 ed by them. 



My thesis is that pure research into 

 the sequence of natural phenomena is 

 in itself of the greatest importance to 

 the progress and welfare of humanity, 

 and that a great statesman can have 

 no higher aim than to solve the problem 

 of how it may best be fostered. To 

 what extent can such a thesis be justi- 

 fied by experience ? 



I might begin by examining the ori- 

 gin and progress of our knowledge of 

 what is called current electricity, to 

 which modern life, from a material point 

 of view, owes so much, In illustration 

 of what we owe to workers in electrical 

 science I need only mention land tele- 

 graphy, ocean telegraphy, wireless tele- 

 graphy, telephones, electric light, elec- 

 tric traction, and our knowledge of 

 radio-activity. The history of this 

 science forms, perhaps, the best example 

 of the importance to man of puie, appa- 

 rently useless, scientific research, for at 

 every stage of it, from Galvani's original 

 observation through the discoveries of 

 the Swede Oersted and of the French- 

 man Ampere to those of our own Fara- 

 day and to the theoretical adumbrations 

 of Clerk Maxwell and to the researches 

 of Crookes on the passage of electricity 

 through vacuum tubes, we meet with 

 the investigation of phenomena which 

 were apparently perfectly useless, and 

 which to most practical men must at the 

 time they were made have appeared as 

 little more than scientific toys provided 



