Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/255

Rh of science which a broad education would surely inspire, our men of riches and leisure who advance the boundaries of scientific knowledge could not be counted on the fingers as they now are, when we think of Boyle, Cavendish, Napier, Lyell, Murchison, and Darwin, but would be as numerous as our statesmen and orators. Statesmen, without a following of the people who share their views and back their work, would be feeble indeed. But, while England has never lacked leaders in science, they have too few followers to risk a rapid march. We might create an army to support our generals in science, as Germany has done, and as France is now doing, if education in this country would only mold itself to the needs of a scientific age. It is with this feeling that Horace Mann wrote: "The action of the mind is like the action of fire: one billet of wood will hardly burn alone, though as dry as the sun and northwest wind can make it, and though placed in a current of air; ten such billets will burn well together, but a hundred will create a heat fifty times as intense as ten—will make a current of air to fan their own flame, and consume even greenness itself."

—The subject of my address has been the relations of science to the public weal. That is a very old subject to select for the year 1885. I began it by quoting the words of an illustrious prince, the consort of our Queen, who addressed us on the same subject from this platform twenty-six years ago. But he was not the first prince who saw how closely science is bound up with the welfare of states. Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, the fourth successor to the caliphate, urged upon his followers that men of science and their disciples give security to human progress. Ali loved to say, "Eminence in science is the highest of honors," and "He dies not who gives life to learning." In addressing you upon texts such as these, my purpose was to show how unwise it is for England to lag in the onward march of science when most other European powers are using the resources of their states to promote higher education and to advance the boundaries of knowledge. English Governments alone fail to grasp the fact that the competition of the world has become a competition in intellect. Much of this indifference is due to our systems of education. I have ill fulfilled my purpose if, in claiming for science a larger share in public education, I have in any way depreciated literature, art, or philosophy, for every subject which adds to culture aids in human development. I only contend that in public education there should be a free play to the scientific faculty, so that the youths who possess it should learn the richness of their possession during the educative process. The same faculties which make a man great in any walk of life—strong love of truth, high imagination tempered by judgment, a vivid memory which can co-ordinate other facts with those under immediate consideration—all these are qualities which the poet, the philosopher, the man of