Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/81

Rh I suppose it is my duty after I have suggested the need of organization to tell you my personal opinion as to the matters where we suffer most in consequence of our lack of organization at the present time.

Our position as a nation, our success as merchants, are in peril chiefly—dealing with preventable causes—because of our lack of completely efficient universities, and our neglect of research. This research has a double end. A professor who is not learning can not teach properly or arouse enthusiasm in his students; while a student of anything who is unfamiliar with research methods, and without that training which research brings, will not be in the best position to apply his knowledge in after life. From neglect of research come imperfect education and a small output of new applications and new knowledge to reinvigorate our industries. From imperfect education come the unconcern touching scientific matters, and the too frequent absence of the scientific spirit, in the nation generally from the court to the parish council.

I propose to deal as briefly as I can with each of these points.

I have shown that so far as our industries are concerned, the cause of our failure has been run to earth; it is fully recognized that it arises from the insufficiency of our universities both in numbers and efficiency, so that not only our captains of industry, but those employed on the nation 's work generally, do not secure a training similar to that afforded by other nations. No additional endowment of primary, secondary or technical instruction will mend matters. This is not merely the opinion of men of science; our great towns know it, our ministers know it.

It is sufficient for me to quote Mr. Chamberlain:

It is not every one who can, by any possibility, go forward into the higher spheres of education; but it is from those who do that we have to look for the men who, in the future, will carry high the flag of this country in commercial, scientific and economic competition with other nations. At the present moment, I believe there is nothing more important than to supply the deficiencies which separate us from those with whom we are in the closest competition. In Germany, in America, in our own colony of Canada and in Australia, the higher education of the people has more support from the government, is carried further, than it is here in the old country; and the result is that in every profession, in every industry, you find the places taken by men and by women who have had a university education. And I would like to see the time in this country when no man should have a chance for any occupation of the better kind, either in our factories, our workshops or our counting-houses, who could not show proof that, in the course of his university career, he had deserved the position that was offered to him. What is it that makes a country? Of course you may say, and you would be quite right, 'The general qualities of the people, their resolution, their intelligence, their pertinacity, and many other good qualities.' Yes; but that is not all, and it is not the main creative feature of a great nation. The greatness of a nation is made by its greatest men. It is those we want to educate. It is to those who are able to go, it may be, from