Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/475

Rh instruction in any branch of experimental or observational science, except anatomy, was to be had in this country; and when there was no such thing as a physical, chemical, biological, or geological laboratory open to the students of any university, or to the pupils of any school, in the three kingdoms. Nor was there any university which recognized science as a faculty, nor a school, public or private, in which scientific instruction was represented by much more than the occasional visit of a vagrant orrery.

At the present moment, any one who desires to obtain a thoroughly scientific training has a choice among a dozen institutions; and elementary scientific instruction is, so to speak, brought to the doors of the poorer classes. If the rich are debarred from like advantages, it is their own affair; but even the most careful public-school education does not now wholly exclude the knowledge that there is such a thing as science from the mind of a young English gentleman. If science is not allowed a fair share of the children's bread, it is at any rate permitted to pick up the crumbs which fall from the time-table, and that is a great deal more than I once hoped to see in my lifetime.

I have followed precedent in leading you to the point at which it might be fair, as it certainly would be customary, to end by congratulating you, as Fellows of the Royal Society, on the past progress and the future prospects of the work which, for two centuries, it has been the aim of the society to forward. But it will perhaps be more profitable to consider that which remains to be done for the advancement of science than to "rest and be thankful" in the contemplation of that which has been done.

In all human affairs the irony of Fate plays a part, and, in the midst of our greatest satisfactions,"surgit amari aliquid." I should have been disposed to account for the particular drop of bitterness to which I am about to refer, by the sexagenarian state of mind, were it not that I find the same complaint in the mouths of the young and vigorous. Of late years it has struck me, with constantly increasing force, that those who have toiled for the advancement of science are in a fair way of being overwhelmed by the realization of their wishes. We are in the case of Tarpeia, who opened the gates of the Roman citadel to the Sabines, and was crushed under the weight of the reward bestowed upon her. It has become impossible for any man to keep pace with the progress of the whole of any important branch of science. If he were to attempt to do so, his mental faculties would be crushed by the multitudes of journals and of voluminous monographs which a too fertile press casts upon him. This was not the case in my young days. A diligent reader might then keep fairly informed of all that was going on, without robbing himself of leisure for original work, and without demoralizing his faculties by the accumulation of unassimilated information. It looks as if the scientific, like other revolutions, meant to devour its own children; as if the growth of science tended