LIBRARY OF THE University of California. Class Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/educationnationaOOfockrich EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS LIST OF WORKS BY SIR NORMAN LOCKYER. PRIMER OF ASTRONOINIY. ELEMENTARY LESSONS IN ASTRONOMY. CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOLAR PHYSICS. CHEMISTRY OF THE SUN. THE METEORITIC HYI^OTHESIS. THE SUN'S PLACE IN NATURE. INORGANIC EVOLUTION, RECENT AND COMING ECLIPSES. STARGAZING, PAST AND PRESENT. {In conjunction with G. M. Seabroke.) THE DAWN OF ASTRONOMY. STONEHENGE AND OTHER BRITISH STONE MONUMENTS. MOVEMENTS OF THE EARTH. STUDIES IN SPECTRUM ANALYSIS. THE SPECTROSCOPE AND ITS APPLICATIONS. THE RULES OF GOLF. (In conjunction with W. Rutherford.) EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 1870-1905 BY IR NORMAN LOCKYER, K.C.B. [TH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE R. B. HALDANE, K.C, M.P. LONDON : MACMILLAN ^ Co., Limited 1906 %. G5-1 v1 INTRODUCTION BY IjttlE RIGHT HONOURABLE R. B. HALDANE, M.P. ■With the thesis wliich forms the text of tliis collection OT Essays and Addresses I am wholly in agreement. Wliat we most lack in this country is the penetration of the mass of our people by the spirit of the Higher Education. Alike in our peace and in our war organisations there is wanting the survey based on science. Without this survey, and the grasp which it yields of the relative proportion of things, a vast waste of matter and energy alike is inevitable. As a nation we possess great qualities. Individuality, initiative, courage, are distinctive of our people. We are well fitted to hold our own in the race for supremacy. But we handicap ourselves by want of the higher training. Such training requires self-submission to hard intel- lectual discipline, and it is in this self-submission that the majority of our young men are lacking. jNone the less progress is being made, and being made rapidly. The standard of knowledge is rising, and T 167001 INTRODUCTION. think that with it the moral standard is rising. Our people are becoming more temperate, and they are insisting on a higher standard of living. They will go further, so the evidence seems to indicate, if they are well led. For the training of the necessary leaders the Higher Education is essential, and the Universities are its only reliable source. One of the satisfactory features of our time is the large increase in the number of our Uni- versities within the last ten years, and the generous en- dowment of them from private sources. That the State ought to do more than it does in the way of endowment I agree with the writer of this book. But I am not sure that I wish to see the burden transferred to the State in the wholesale fashion that is sometimes suggested. In expenditure out of taxes science is as essential as in the arts and crafts to which these Essays and Addresses refer. Probably nothing conduces more to national efficiency than frugality in the use of national resources. The private donor should be encouraged and not left to expend his generosity in regions which do not concern the State directly. In writing this I do not mean that the Government ought not to spend public money generously upon the Universities. I mean that it should not be spent unless and until a case for the necessity of such expenditure has been clearly made out. INTRODUCTION. • vii There has been too much waste in the past over some mattei^ connected with education, and, as the result, too much starvation over others, to make this warning- superfluous. No one who has had to do with the business of Government can fail to have felt the pang of regret at the discovery that precipitate expenditure in the past, which events have shown to be misplaced, has deprived him of the money necessary to effect necessary reforms. Festina lente is a good maxim for IJPCliancellor of the Exchequer. He must remember both the words of the maxim. With this preliminary word of caution I associate myself enthusiastically with the endeavour of my col- league in the British Science Guild. There is a saying of a recent writer which I will quote as expressing the pith and marrow of what Sir Norman Lockyer and others of us desire to preach as our gospel: — " Vom Wissen Zu Konnen ist immer ein Sprung ; der Sprung aber ist vom Wissen und nicht vom Nicht-Wissen." R. B. HALDANE. % PREFACE I have brought together in the present volume several among my Essays and Addresses on educational subjects which have appeared during the last thirty-live years. ^In these I endeavoured to show how vital it is, )m a national point of view, that the education of everybody, from prince to peasant, should be based upon a study of things and causes and effects as well as of words, and that no training of the mind is com- plete which does not make it capable of following and taking advantage of the workings of natural law which dominate all human activities. My point has in all cases been that the nation most highly educated in this manner can, if the number of combatants be equal, best liold its own in the struggle for existence both in peace and war, seeing that success in either now depends not upon muscle but upon the utilisation of the best and most numerous applications of science. If the number of combatants is unequal, then the smaller number can only hold its own if it be much more highly educated than its opponent. The present position of Britain from this point of view shows that those of us who have endeavoured for the last thirty-five years to point out the way in which our people can survive in the struggle, have, to a large extent, been crying in the wilderness. In spite of what PREFACE. has been done during the last ten years, instead o a relative advance there is still a relative decline in relation to other countries. The United States and Germany now have greater populations than ourselves and at the same time the best and most complete education, science and research, are there fully fostered, while they are practically left uncared for by the British Government. If this goes on there can only be one result, which cannot be evaded even by the close welding together, be it sympathetic, fiscal or political, of all the British people beyond the seas, unless the greater population is at the same time furnished with greater brain-power than that of the competing nations. This will not be until the British and Colonial Govern- ments change their attitude towards science and the higher instruction. Largely increased endowments of the higher education and research, and the utilisation of scientific methods in all branches of the administration, equal to those at the disposal of competing nations, can alone save us. J|j Strenuous efforts should be made to apply these remedies at once ; if delayed they may be too late. M\ I have to thank Mr. Haldane, who among other things is the President of the Science Guild, for the honour he has done the book by writing an introduction. Norman Lockybr. November, 1906. CONTENTS Introduction by the Right Honourable R. B. Haldane - v Preface ix 1870.— Education and War 1 1873. — The Endowment of Research • « . • 6 1877.— Technical Education 11 1883.— The Education of our Industrial Classes - iS The Education Question in 1883 - - - - 43 1885. — Lord Playfair and others on our Educational Needs 50 1887. — Science and Education during Victoria's Reign - 57 1895. — Education and Industry 62 1896. — Scientific Education in Germany and England - 65 1898. — A Short History of Scientific Instruction - - 75 1899. — Scientific Education and the Progress of Nations - 105 1901.— Education in the New Century - - - - 118 1902.— The Organisation of Knowledge - - ■ - 130 1903.— The Education of Naval Officers - - 150 The Influence of Brain-power on History - - 172 1904.— The National Need of the State Endowment of Universities 216 1905. — Opening Address at the Inauguration of the British Science Guild 222 The New Renaissance 226 Appendices — The Grerman Universities 243 The Universities of the United States - 248 The Requirements of the University of Birmingham 258 The Requirements of the Welsh Universities and Colleges 262 ^635 -..-.,.... 265 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. EDUCATION AND WAR. (1870.) The dogs of war are again let loose, and in the two raost highly civilised countries of Europe, where, a little time ago, science, education and commerce were in full sway, all the arts of peace are already neglected, and in j)rospect have gone back a quarter of a century. We can hardly yet realise that at the present moment railways are being torn up, lighthouses dismantled, lightships towed into harbour, and monuments of engineering skill, such as the bridge over the Rhine at Kiel, undermined, so that they may be destroyed at a moment's notice. I)Ut these, after all, are calamities of the second order ; education is stopped ; science schools are broken up ; both professors and pupils are forsaking the laboratory and the class-room, and the whole machinery of progress has come to a standstill. Science has little to do with politics : the function of science is to unite the whole human family, whereas the function of politics seems to be, both in the case of men and nations, to create parties and to emphasise them as much as possible, the object in each case being place for the partisans — whether that place be an income of A 2 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. a few thousands a year in one case or increased terri- tory in the other. As science advances such policies will be overridden — when science and education have taken their proper posi- tion — when the sword has given place to brain— when more of the best men of each nation take part in each nation's counsels, the dreadful thirst after blood will give way to something better ; monarchs will see the folly of being surrounded merely with empty helmets, or at all events if they do not, others will ; and much will have been done when the pampering of armed men shall cease. There is one point, however, in connection with the coming war which cannot be pointed out too strongly — one duty which England owes to herself, and which, if it be well done, may make her after all a gainer from the dreadful strife. It has been already stated, and the statement is not an exaggeration, that the war will throw the countries engaged in it back a quarter of a century. Now, England at the present moment, be the cause what it may, is in many things a quarter of a century behind France and Prussia, notably in educa- tion of all kinds and especially in scientific education. The following extract from the Eeport of Mr. Samuel- son's Committee on Scientific Education — a report which, we believe, has not even yet been taken into con- sideration by our Legislature — is so much to the point that we give it here : — " Nearly every witness speaks of the extraordinarily rapid progress of Continental nations in manufactures, and attributes that rapidity, not to the model workshops which are met with in some foreign countries, and are but an indifferent substitute for our own great factories, and for those which are rising up in every part of the EDUCATION AND WAR, Continent ; but, besides other causes, to the scientific training of the proprietors and managers in France, Switzerland, Belgium and Ger- many, and to the elementary instruction which is universal amongst the working population of Germany and Switzerland. There can be no doubt, from the evidence of Mr. Mundella, of Professor Fleeming Jenkin, of Mr. Kitson and others, and from the numerous reports of competent observers, that the facilities for acquiring a knowledge of theoretical and applied science are incomparably greater on the Continent than in this country, and that such knowledge is based on an advanced state of secondary education. " All the witnesses concur in desiring similar advantages of education for this country, and are satisfied that nothing more is required, and that nothing less will suffice, in order that we may retain the position which we now hold in the van of all industrial nations. All are of opinion that it is of incalculable importance economically that our manufacturers and managers should be thoroughly instructed in the principles of their arts. [ " They are convinced that a knowledge of the principles of science I on the part of those who occupy the higher industrial ranks, and the ' possession of elementary instruction by those who hold subordinate positions, would tend to promote industrial progress by stimulating improvement, preventing costly and unphilosophical attempts at impossible inventions, diminishing waste and obviating in a great measure ignorant opposition to salutary changes. " Whilst all the witnesses concurred in believing that the economical necessity for general and scientific education is not yet fully reaUsed by the country, some of them consider it essential that the Govern- ment shouki interfere much more actively than it has done hitherto, to promote the establishment of scientific schools and colleges in our great industrial centres." It is impossible that we can say anything stronger than this in favour of taking the fullest advantage of the opportunity of regaining our intellectual and therefore our commercial prestige. If England is to prepare for war, the abnormal con- dition, so let it be ; but surely, a fortiori she should prepare for feace, the normal one, as well. This has never struck her ministers, and the reason is not far to seek. But this is not all ; the same disregard for science, A 2 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. arising from the ignorance of science among our rulers, has probably placed us in another position of disadvan- tage. While France and Prussia have been organising elaborate systems of scientific training for their armies, a recent Commission has destroyed what little chance there was of our officers being scientifically educated at all. As there is little doubt that a scientific training for the young officer means large capabilities for combina- tion and administration when that officer comes to com- mand, we must not be surprised if the organisation of our army, if it is to do its work with the minimum of science, will, at some future time, again break down as effec- tually as it did in the Crimea, or that our troops will find themselves over-matched should the time ever come when they will be matched with a foe who knows how to profit to the utmost from scientific aids. Wh'le, therefore, the Continent is being deluged with blood, let us jorepare for 'peace as well as for war ; let us prepare ourselves for victories in the arts, conquests over nature ; let us, by means of a greater educational effort, more science schools, a truer idea of the mode in which a nation can really progress, fit ourselves to take our place among the nations when peace returns. Surely if there be statesmen among us, such a clear line of policy will not be overlooked. Education and Science at the present moment a England's greatest needs. THE ENDOWMENT OF KESEARCH. (1873.) There are not wanting signs that ere long the whole question of the present condition of research in this country, and of its amelioration, will undergo a com- plete discussion. Those who are best acquainted with this condition, and the position occupied by England at the present moment in the science of the world, will be the first to acknowledge the importance of general attention being directed to the subject. When the matter comes to be considered by minds free from the trammels alike of tradition and of pre- judice, it will doubtless be found strange that such a fundamental question should have waited so long before it should have asserted itself ; on the other hand, it is perfectly clear that many who are even now consider- ing it have utterly failed to grasp it as it will have to be grasped. This lack of clearness in the appreciation of the vast bearings of the question is quite pardonable, and is, doubtless, to a large extent, the natural consequence of the manner in which physical science has been added to the older knowledge. It would seem, however, that a mere statement of a few fundamental positions should clear the view. These positions, most fortunately, are rapidly asserting themselves. 6 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. First, we have the generally acknowledged fact that a nation's progress depends upon its science. Science, in fact, is the engine which must be as ever active in peace as the cannpn's mouth is in war, and a nation may- just as safely neglect one as the other. This brings us to the second position. Does England as a nation pay as much heed to the one as the other ? or as much as other nations ? To ask this question is to answer it. England as a nation does next to nothing for this peace armament, and on all hands it is acknow- ledged that the nation's progress from this point of view is in great danger, because the decline of research in England, not only relatively, but absolutely, is so decided, that it is already a matter of history. To what then is this decline to be attributed ? The reply to this question brings us to the third point. There is absolutely no career for the student of science, as such, in this country. True scientific research is absolutely unencouraged and unpaid. The original investigator is of course the man here intended, not the man who turns science into a means of livelihood, however hon- ourable, either as a teacher or a manufacturer. There can be no doubt that to this state of things our present condition is to be ascribed, and this point is, according to us, the key of the whole position. A glance at the condition of things in France and Germany will strengthen our view. Why was Germany till lately the acknowledged leader in all matters connected with the advancement of knowledge ? Because there were no such brilliant and highly paid careers open there as here to those who choose politics, the bench, the bar or com- merce, in preference to science. And what is happening I I ENDOWMENT OF RESEARCH: 7 there at present ? A decline visible not alone to the far-sighted, because Germany is getting rich just as England has long been rich. Why is France now endowing research on a large scale, and even propos- ing that the most successful students in her magnificent Polytechnic School should be allowed to advance Science as State servants ? Because in France there is a Government instructed enough to acknowledge that a decline of investigation may bring evil to the State, and that it is the duty of the State to guard against this condition of things at all cost, this condition till lately, there as here, being that outside of the State service and outside of the professoriate, no means of existence are provided for a student of science ; hence men of the most excellent promise are yearly lost to research, which undoubtedly also is the case with us. What course does it then behove us to pursue in this country, in order that science may take up its true posi- tion in our midst ? Here again opinion is rapidly forming itself. It is obvious to all who have thought about the matter, that it is absolutely indispensable that an employment, neces- sary for the public good, which is neglected to the State's detriment because in itself it does not bring in a live- lihood, should be artificially supported at the public expense. It would be quite justifiable, both from an economical and also a political point of view, to provide for the needs of knowledge out of the taxation of the country ; because the taxpayer gets back his quid pro quo for the taxes he pays in the form of the amelioration of the conditions of living, as he gets it back in the form of security and good government. EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. It will probably be a considerable time before this truth is brought home to the public mind so completely as to render possible any large grant of national income for this purpose ; but there are not wanting indications that statesmen of all parties are awakening to its reality, which in point of fact has long been conceded in principle. Still, such a source of support for science to any very large extent must appear, even to the most sanguine, a thing of the future. The area of knowledge will probably, in the future, increase beyond the means of any artificial support less than the national one ; but perhaps it cannot be said that this state of things exists at present. What, then, are we to do in the meantime ? Have we no means which are at hand and immediately available, which may suffice to support the present claims of know- ledge, without drawing too extensively upon the long- suffering or the intelligence of the taxpayer ? We have the means, if we will only employ them — nay more, some of them are now, for the most part, lying idle — of not only supplying all the needs of the physical and other sciences, but of supplying them magnificently. To mention no other sources of supply, there is the Patent Fund, and the endowments of the colleges of the old Universities. As to the Patent Fund, it is not too much to say that a large part has been derived from the application of the abstract truths of physical science to the requirements of ordinary life, and that therefore the needs of physical science would be properly provided for out of it. As to the College Endowments, whichever way we look ii ENDOWMENT OF RESEARCH. » It them, either as private bequests, as they are at length jasing to be regarded, or as public funds, the conclusion Is the same : their proper destination is the support of learning and science. ■ If we look upon them as private bequests, and interpret ^^Bhe wills of founders and benefactors on the usual p-pres R)rinciple, we should be right in devoting to investigation of facts at first hand the funds which were left by the far-seeing men of the time of the revival of letters for the support of book-learning, which at that time occupied Khe place of modern science. That they so regarded Bhe aim of these bequests is shown, amongst other things, very remarkably by the universal annexation to the enjoyment of them of the condition of residence within the Universities. When the whole, or the major part, of the materials of investigation was enshrined in libraries, to insist that a man should remain where B^braries were, was to insist that he should remain in his H^orkshop. H If, on the other hand, we are to regard these endow- f^nents as public funds, as is now generally agreed, is it right that such public funds should be consumed either in educating those who are practically as well able to p^ay for their own education as those who now receive a similar one at, say, the London University, an institution Itarhich is not aided by the State ; or in supplying a life- ^naintenance to a considerable body of able young men, in return for passing a good examination at the outset of life ? It is well known that the ordinary Fellow of a college loes not dream for a moment that he has any duties rwards knowledge or science. He regards the public 10 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. money which he enjoys as a portion in a freehold estate, to enable him to tide over the uncertain years which come at the commencement of the ordinary professional career, the brilliant rewards of which we have shown to be the cause of the decline of science in this country, because they enable the practical life to outbid in attrac- tiveness the laborious, but most necessary, pursuit of truth. TECHNICAL EDUCATION. (1877.) I Professor Huxley has seized the occasion offered him by his promise to aid the Working Men's Club and Institute Union by contributing to their present series of fort- nightly lectures, to state his opinion on a question which has lately been exercising the minds of some of the most influential members of various city companies. For some time past a joint committee, representing the most important among these bodies, has been en- eavouring to obtain information as to the best means of applying certain of their surplus funds to the assistance of what is called technical education, and there is little doubt that a proposal for a huge technical university, made some time ago, and the discussion which took place in connection with that proposal, has had some- what to do in leading to the present condition of affairs. Professor Huxley and some four or five other gentlemen have been appealed to by this joint committee to send in reports on what they consider the best way to set about the work, and it is from this point of view that Professor Huxley's lecture is so important. It was not , merely fresh and brilliant and full of good things, as ^■all his lectures are, but is doubtless an embodiment of ^Biis report to the joint committee. I. 12 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. We are rejoiced, therefore, to see that Professor Huxley is at one with the view that, after all, the mind is the most important instrument which the handicraftsman, whether he be a tinker or a physicist, will ever be called upon to use, and that a technical education which teaches him to use a lathe, a tool or a loom, before he has learned how to use his mind, is no education at all. Professor Huxley not only defined technical education as the best training to qualify the pupil for learning technicalities for himself, but he stated what he con- sidered such an education might be, and how the city funds can be best spent in helping it on. Besides being able to read, write and cipher, the student should have had such training as should nave awakened his understanding and given him a real interest in his pursuit. The next requirement referred to was some acquaintance with the elements of physical science — a knowledge (rudimentary, it might be, but good and sound, so far as it went), of the properties and character of natural objects. The professor is also of opinion that it is eminently desirable that he should be able, more or less, to draw. The faculty of drawing, in the highest artistic sense, was, it was conceded, like the gift of poetry, inborn and not acquired ; but, as every- body almost could write in some fashion or other, so, for the present purpose, as writing was but a kind of drawing, everybody could more or less be supposed to draw. A further desideratum was some ability to read one or two languages besides the student's own, that he might know what neighbouring nations, and those with which we were most mixed up, were doing, and have access to valuable sources of information which TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 13 ould otherwise be sealed to him. But above all — and this the speaker thouj^ht was the most essential condition — the pupil should have kept in all its bloom the freshness and youthfulness of his mind, all the vigour and elasticity proper to that age. Professor Huxley then went on to explain that this freshness and vigour should not have been washed out of the student by the incessant labour and intellectual debauchery often involved in grinding for examinations. We gather from this part of the address — we shall refer the others by and by — that so far as Professor Huxley's dvice goes we are not likely to see any great expenditure of the money of the ancient city corporations either in the erection of a huge " practical " university or in the creation of still another '' Examining Board." How then does he propose to spend it ? Here we come to a substantial proposal which Professor Huxley may consider to be the most important part of his address. What is wanted, he considers, is some machinery for utilising in the public interest special talent and genius brought to light in our schools. " If any Government could find a Watt, a Davy or a Faraday in the market, the bargain would be dirt cheap at 100,000/." Referring to his saying when he was a member of the London School Board that he should like to see a ladder by which a child could climb from the gutter to the highest position in the State, he dwelt upon the importance of some system by which any boy of special aptitude should be encouraged to prolong his studies, to join art and science classes, and be apprenticed, with a premium if necessary. In the case of those who showed great fitness for intellectual pursuits they might be trained EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. as pupil teachers, brought to London, and placed in some collegiate institution or training school. In this way the money of the guilds would be spent in aiding existing teaching systems, in which, on the whole, an enormous progress was acknowledged. It is true the architects of London would not have the opportunity of immortalising themselves by erecting an imposing edifice, but, on the other hand, the influence of the Guilds might be felt whenever there was a handi- craft to foster, or a potential Watt to be sought out. We do not imagine that it is Professor Huxley's idea that there shall be no local representation of the city's new activity and influence ; the reference to the training of teachers, we fancy, and other remarks here and there, seem to point to some such institution as the Ecole Nor- male of Paris, where the best and most practical scientific teaching could be carried on. Everyone knows how much room there is for such an institution as this, but on this little money need be spent, so far as bricks and mortar are concerned, as little money is needed to equip such laboratories as are really meant for work. There is an advantage in such lectures as these by no means limited to the expression of opinion on the part of the speaker. The slow and sure way in which science is taking a hold upon our national progress is well evi- denced by the fact that the daily press can now no longer ignore such outcomes as these, and hence it is that they do good beyond the mere boundary of the question under discussion. They show the importance of, and foster interest in, the general question of intellectual and scien- tific progress. The Times agrees in the main with the kind of W I A TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 15 iducation to be given, and holds that " What is needed is give a man the intelligence, the knowledge of general principles, combined with the habits of correct obser- vation and quick perception, which will enable h^.m after- wards to master the technicalities of his art, instead of becoming a slave to them. No objection can be taken to the advice that, for this purpose, a lad, after learning to read, write and cipher, should acquire some facility in drawing and should be familiarised with the elements of physical science. The importance of the latter study for this particular purpose is, indeed, unquestionable, and even paramount, for a handicraftsman is dealing exclusively with physical objects in his work, and his skill in applying the processes of his craft will vary in great measure with his knowledge of the scientific prin- ciples on which they depend." But we fancy that The Times writer does not look upon this scientific part of education quite as the lecturer does, for he proceeds to add : " There can be little doubt, for instance, that many of the perils of mining might be averted if the miners were alive to the scientific reasons of the precautions they are urged to adopt. Many an improvement, probably, which now escapes the eye of a man who adheres slavishly to the rules of his craft would occur to him if he were applying them with conscious intelligence." The Times, however, considers that the school-time is too short for the languages and, curiously enough, drives its point home by saying a harder thing about the Greek and Latin of our public schools than Professor Huxley has ever done ; while, on the other hand, the Daily News points out that Professor Huxley this time 16 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. 4 may have raised a hornet's nest about his ears by the unduly reasonable tone of his demands. The Daily News then adds : "A man of science who does not demand that from the earliest age an hour a day shall be devoted to each of the ologies may be re- garded as a traitor to his cause." For our part we know of no man of science who has ever made such a demand ; and a careful examination of what men of science have said on this point for the last ten years will show that these extreme views to which refe^' "^e is here made are not those of men of science at all. It will be well also if the strong L -guage used in con- nection with the multiple examinations of the present day brings that question well before the bar of public opinion. The Times is " sorry to see another flout thus inflicted, in passing, on that system of examinations which, like most good institutions, may do harm to the few, but is indispensable as a motive for work to the great majority." Professor Huxley has expressed the views of most of the leading teachers in this country with regard to the effect of these examinations upon the students, and he might have referred to their reflex action on the examiner. Go into a company of scientific men, and observe the most dogmatic, the most unfruit- ful and the least modest among them, you will find that this man is, as we may say, an examiner by pro- fession. Speak to him of research or other kindred topics, he will smile at you — his time is far too precious to be wasted in discussing such trivialities ; like his examinees, he finds they do not pay. The example set by Germany in this respect, both as regards students and professors, cannot be too often referred to, and there is 4 TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 17 little doubt that the love of science for its own sake which has made Germany what she now is intellectually, has sprung to a large extent from the fact that each young student sees those around him spurred from within and i not from without. Noblesse oblige. I In point of fact, as far as our future scientific progress I is concerned the examination question is as important i as that connected with the kind of education to be sub- sidised by the city guilds, and it is important, seeing that our legislators will, in the coming time, have to give their opinion on these subjects as well as on beer, vivisection and contagious diseases, that in Professor Huxley's language, " By the process called distiUatio per ascensum — distillation upwards — there should in time be no Member of Parliament who does not know as much of science as a scholar in one of our elementary schools." THE EDUCATION OF OUR INDUSTRIAL CLASSES.* * (1883.) It is, I believe, according to precedent, now that an- other year's work of the Science Classes here has been crowned by the award of prizes, that I should address you on some topic allied to the matters which have brought us together to-night. I need not search long for a subject, for the scientific education of those engaged in our national industries — upon the success or failure of which, in the struggle for existence, the welfare of our country so largely depends — is now one of the questions of the day. I propose, therefore, to lay before you some facts and figures bearing upon the education of our industrial classes, and I shall attempt to make what I have to say on that special point clearer, by touching upon some preliminary matters, which will show how it is that such a question as this has not been settled long ago ; and * An Address delivered at Coventry. The late Sir Bernard Samuelson, Bart. , F.R.S., then one of the leaders in the educational movement, wrote to me as follows with regard to it : — " I have read your Coventry address with great pleasure. It has for the first time condensed into few words, easily understood by all, the whole problem of the Education of the Industrial Classes in this country. It avoids the exaggeration so common when technical instruction and its influence on industry is spoken of, and it does justice to the efforts of th§ government, " THE EDUCATION OF ARTIZANS. 19 further, that we can, if we wish, settle it now in the full light of the experience gained elsewhere, instead of wasting, let us say, a quarter of a century in costly experiments which may perhaps leave us in confusion worse confounded. To begin, then, why is this question being discussed now ? There is a great fact embodied in the most concrete fashion in the way in which our Government is now com- pelled to deal with our national education. Side by side with the Education Department by which our Minister controls in the main that book learning which has been given time out of mind, there has sprung up during the I last thirty years another department — the Science and ^Art Department — by which he controls a new kind of national learning altogether. We have added to the old study of books a new study of things. This new learning was, we may say, only introduced in 1852, in which year the Queen in her speech on opening Parliament said, " The advancement of the fine arts and of practical science will be readily recognised by you as worthy the attention of a great and enlightened nation." We have since found out that they are indeed worthy the attention of a great nation, and more than this, that no nation can be called enlightened whose citizens are not skilled in both ; in fact, that they are to peace what cannon and swords are to war. But for a nation to foster them is one thing, to include them in a national scheme of education is another. Ought they to be so included ? Let us see. What do we mean by education ? Roughly speaking, we may say that there are two B2 II 20 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. distinct schools of thought on this subject, although the existence of these two schools is not so generally re- cognised as it should be. According to one view, the human mind is an elastic bag into which facts are to be crammed for future use. A variation of the view is that the mind is inelastic, and then the stuffing process becomes more serious, and instead of depending upon a natural expansion, a process like that in use by the manufacturers of soda-water is employed. It is not to be wondered at that the youthful mind likes neither of these methods ; what ought to be a true delight becomes a real agony, and hence it is, as a Warwickshire man wrote many years ago — " Love goes toward love As schoolboys from their books ; But love from love Toward school with heavy looks." — The mind on this view resembles a store where, as our American cousins say, everything, from a frying-pan to a frigate, which shall be useful to the owner in after- life is to be found. Hence such terms as Grammar School, Trade School, Science School, Commercial Aca- demy, and hence, I am sorry to say, systems of examination which too often only serve to show what a boy can remember, and care little about either what a boy can do, or whether he can think. So much for one view. Now for the other. It is more difficult to image it, but, in the absence of a better illustration, the mind may be likened to the body — a thing to be trained so that its grace, its freedom, its strength, its grasp, indeed all its powers in all directions and in all ways may be brought out by proper training. THE EDUCATION OF ARTIZANS. 21 tf the training is one-sided its power cannot be many- ided, but it is most useful when many-sided. Therefore, as each muscle of the body has to be properly trained |B|to make a perfect man, so must the educational system fnbrought into play be such as to train to its uttermost I and bring out each quality of the mind. Each faculty pf it when called into play becomes as a two-edged sword m the arms of a strong man. In this, or some such way, then, may we picture to ourselves the difference between Lstruction in its real sense and education in its real sense. Now, which of these systems is the better one ? We shall see at once that the first may give us a mind stored with facts covering a large or a small area ; it may |Bi)e bookkeeping, or it may be Latin, or anything else. But will the mind be able to use this store in all cases ? We grant knowledge, but may not wisdom linger ? Those of us who have got to Voltaire's second stage, and who have studied men, know that this too often happens, and that much knowledge does not prevent the owner from being absolutely unfitted to grapple with the problems which each rising sun brings to him for solution. The other system, on the other hand, if the training is not thoroughly all-round, may give us a man who finds that the questions presented to him on his entrance to active life are precisely those which require the application of that quality of mind, whichever it may be, which was least trained at school. He may find himself face to face with problems of the existence of which he never dreamed, and so far removed from his experience that his mind, however powerful in some directions, fails to grapple with them. 22 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. We seem, then, on the horns of a dilemma. Instruction may provide us with a store of facts, which the mind does not know how to use. Education may provide us with a mind which has been trained in a world utterly different from the real one. How can we escape from this dilemma ? We must use the materials of that instruction which is most useful to us in our progress through life as a basis for the complete education of the mind. Which instruction is the most useful to us ? The poet tells us that " the proper study of mankind is man ; " but when we come to prose and read the views of those who best know the needs of modern society, and especially industrial society, we read some- thing like this, which I quote from the report on elementary and middle class instruction, published by the Koyal Commission of the Netherlands : " The idea of Industrial Society not limited to agriculture, manufactures, and trade or commerce, but understood in its widest significa- tion, points plainly to the acquiring of the knowledge of the present world, and to its application to economical and technical pursuits." Now, here is a subject on which a volume might be written, but I shall only point out to you the obviousness of the importance of the study, not merely of ourselves, or of the world around us, but of ourselves and of the world around us. This lands us in the necessity of training our minds in literature or humanities, and science and art. The study of the humanities enables us to know the best thoughts, and the most stable conclusions on vital questions, arrived at by our forerunners and those who are fighting the same battles in other lands. The study of science enables THE EDUCATION OF ARTIZANS. 23 us, on the other hand, to get a true idea of the beautiful universe around us, of our real work in the world and of the best manner in which we can do that work in closest harmony with the laws of Nature. Did we study the external world alone we should not profit by the experience of those that preceded us. Did we study humanities alone we should be shorn of half our natural strength in face of many of the problems placed before I us by the conditions of modern life ; and, more than this, all the glories of the beautiful world on which our lot is cast, and the majesty of the universe of which that world forms part would hardly exist for us, or give rise i only to dumb wonder. ^k Here let me tell you a little story. Three years ago when ^fcavelling in America, one morning, at a little station ^B— we were approaching the Rocky Mountains — I was ^istonished to see a very old and venerable French cure in his usual garb enter the car, and as he was evidently in some distress of mind, and as evidently had little command of English, I asked him in his native language if I could be of any service to him. There was a difficulty about a box which I soon settled, and then we sat down and entered into conversation. He soon found out that I was very astonished to see him there and told me so. I acknowledged it. "It is very simple," he said. " I am very old, and six months ago I was like to die, and I was doing my best to prepare myself for the long journey. In my fancies I imagined myself already in the presence of le hon Dieu, and I fancied this question addressed to me, ' M. le cure, how did you like the beautiful world you have left ? ' I rose in my bed as this thought came into my head for I — I who — figure to yourself — had dared 24 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. to preach of a better world for fifty years, was, oh ! so ignorant of this. And I registered a vow that if le hon Dieu allowed me to rise from that bed of sickness I would spend the rest of my life in admiring his works — et me void I I am on my journey round the world ; I am going now to stop at the Yosemite Valley a few days en route for San Francisco and Japan ; and the box, Monsieur, which your kindness has rescued for me, con- tains a little scientific library, now my constant com- panion in my delicious wanderings." Our general scheme of education, therefore, unless it is to be one-sided, must combine science with the humanities. But, so far, I have said nothing about art. Now, from fche educational point of view, science and art are very closely connected, inasmuch as in the early stages of both studies the student's powers of observation are brought out and trained in the most perfect way, while in the later stages, to succeed in either, he must have learned that very important thing — how to use his hands ; and at whatever age you put it that a boy or a girl should use the hand neatly and skilfully, before that age you should take care that some elementary grounding, at all events, in the only training which can do this, shall have been given. No amount of Greek, or of useful or useless geography, or even of rule of three, can prevent the fingers being all thumbs, unless some such training has been given, and for the very earliest training drawing is un- doubtedly the best. But this is by no means the only advantage of the combination. Any one who has to go over thousands of examination papers finds in nineteen cases out of twenty that an orderly drawing or diagram is V UNlVtKoi I • OF THE EDUCATION OF ARTIZANS. 25 generally associated with an orderly mind. In fact, a diagram may be regarded as an index of the amount and accuracy of the knowledge possessed by the student. The text of the student who fails in the diagram is generally a more awkward jumble than the diagram itself. Hence the facts show that this training of the hand is accompanied by much good mental result. This is now so generally recognised, that in a not distant period no professor of biology, for instance, will attempt to demonstrate practi- cally microscopic structure to students who have had no preliminary training in drawing. - This is one example out of many which might be given, for as natural science is the study of nature, and as we can only study her by pheno- mena, the eye and the hand and the mind must work together to achieve success ; and he who attempts to describe the geology of a district, the minute structure of a frog's foot, an eclipse of the sun, or the rings of Saturn, in words and words only, has only done half his work ; to complete it he must appeal to art for aid. Now, many of you may be prepared to concede, without any further insistence on my part, that an elementary acquaintance with art is of great, nay, of even essential importance, not only for its own sake, but because of its aid in natural studies. We must then add art to science and literature in order to form a complete curriculum. Here pardon me one moment's digression from the direct line of my argument. Many will agree that science is aided by art who deny that art is aided by science to the same extent. Indeed, some are prepared to urge that one who proposes to devote himself to art can derive no possible benefit from the study of science. Let us inquire into this 26 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. we must know anatomy, a most important branch of science ; and as a matter of fact, many artists study anatomy as minutely as many surgeons do ; and in the old days, when the artist and the poet were more saturated with the knowledge of the time than they are now, we find the great Leonardo at once professor of anatomy and founder of a school of painting as yet unsurpassed. If we pass from the figure to ornamental design, or if we wish to show objects in perspective, is not every line, whether straight or curved, dominated by an appeal to geometry ? Again, suppose we take landscape. Here we meet with phenomena of colour as much regulated by law as are the phenomena of form, and an anatomy of colour is fast being formulated, which to the artist of the future will be as precious as the anatomy of form has been in the past, and will ever continue to be. Let us take, for instance, an artist who wishes to paint a sunset, one of the most magnificent sights which it is given to man to witness. The sky is covered with clouds here and there, and not only do the colours of the clouds vary, almost from moment to moment, but in all cases they present the strongest contrast to the colour of the sky itself. The artist is bewildered, and finds each effect that he would seize to be so transient that at last he gives up in despair the attempt to note down the various tints. But the possession of a knowledge of the part played by the lower strata of our atmosphere in absorbing now one and now another of the components of the light of the setting sun, would change this despair into a joy almost beyond expression. For the bewildering changes of colour are then discovered to be bound together by a law as beautiful as the effects themselves. «i THE EDUCATION OF ARTIZAKS. There is another point of view. One is frequently- pained in seeing in an otherwise noble work of art, evidences that the artist was crassly ignorant of the phenomena he attempted to represent, and in his attempts to transcend nature had only succeeded in caricaturing her, painting, for example, a rainbow in perspective, or a moon with its dark side turned towards the setting sun. Yet these are almost trifles, and, in fact, here we have the excuse of the ignorant artist — now, I am thankful to say, the representative of a class that is fast disappearing — for his defence is, that he has nothing to do with such small matters, and that accuracy of this kind may quite properly be sacrificed to secure the balance of his picture. Now, to return to the main drift of my address, we have seen that in any complete system of education neither science nor art must be neglected by the side of the old humanities — the old literary studies ; and it is indeed fortunate for us that we live in an age in which the laws and the phenomena of the external world have been studied and formulated with such diligence and success that it is as easy to teach science in the best possible way, as it is to teach classics in the best possible way. It is half a century since the Germans found out the importance of the new studies from a national point of view. We are now finding it out for ourselves, and finding it out not a moment too soon ; and I need hardly tell you that the transformation which is going on is acknowledged to be one of the highest national im- portance. It is no longer an abstract question of a method of education ; it is a question of the life or death of many of our national industries, for, in a struggle for existence, how can a man who wins his bread by the 28 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. application of national laws to some branch, of industry, if he be ignorant of those laws, compete with the man who is acquainted with them ? If for man we read nation, you see our present position. How far then have we got with our transformation, limiting our inquiry to primary and secondary instruction ? First, as to elementary education. The idea of the education — ^the compulsory education, if necessary, of all the citizens in a state — dates from the time of Luther. It is a horrible thing that we should have had to wait three and a half centuries since his time for such a measure, which is an act of simple justice to each child that is brought into the world. In 1524 Luther addressed a letter to the Councils of all the towns in Germany begging them to vote money, not merely for roads, dykes, guns and the like, but for schoolmasters, so that the poor children might be taught ; on the ground that if it be the duty of a State to compel its able-bodied citizens to take up arms to defend the fatherland, it is a fortiori its duty to compel them to send their children to school, and to provide schools for those who, without such aid, would remain uninstructed. Thanks to our present system, now about ten years old, out of an estimated population of 8,000,000 children between the ages of two and fifteen, we had last year nearly four millions at school, and out of an estimated population of 4,700,000 between five and thirteen, we had 3,300,000 at school. Among this school population elementary science is at last to be made a class subject, and we find mechanics, mathematics, animal physiology and botany among the specific subjects in addition to the three R's. 120,000 THE EDICATION OF ARTIZANS. children received education in these subjects last year, and if we are justified in assuming that as many will learn science when it becomes a class subject as now already learn drawing, we may expect in a year or two to have this 120,000 swelled into three-quarters of a million. I must again insist upon the fact that practical teaching in science is the only thing that can be tolerated. Of course, with a new subject, the great difficulty is the difficulty of the teacher. Any system, therefore, of econo- mising teaching power is of the highest importance. I am glad to know that a system suggested by Col. Donnelly, which uses the utmost economy of teaching power, has been carried into admirable practical effect at Birmingham, and I believe also at Liverpool, and other large towns. So that in the most important centres we may be certain that science will be taught in the best manner. It is worth while to dwell on this system for a moment. Under it practical teaching is given to boys and girls of the fifth and higher standards, and also to the pupil teachers. The subject chosen for the boys is mechanics, that for the girls domestic economy, giving each of these subjects a wide range of meaning. There is a central laboratory in which the experiments are prepared, and from which the appa- ratus ready for use is conveyed in a light hand-cart to the ■■urious schools — twenty-six in number in Birmingham — belonging to the Board. In this way it is possible to give twenty lessons a week, and the circuit of the schools can be made in a fortnight. In the intervals between the visits of the demonstrator the class teachers recapitulate his lessons and give the children written examinations. About 1,200 children are now being instructed in this way. ^Hflfe make the instruction as real as possible, children are lis 30 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. ^1 brought in to aid in performing the experiments, objects are passed round and questioning at the end of the lecture is encouraged. In the education, then, of our children from the ages of five to thirteen, we may reasonably expect to find that science teaching will in the future be carefully looked after. We now come to secondary education. Here, again, great progress has been made during the last few years. The real difficulties against its introduction have been the overcrowded state of the old curriculum, the scarcity of teachers, the want of sympathy with it, and the igno- rance of its importance on the part of some headmasters. But to those headmasters who held the view that no real training could be got out of a subject which boys studied with positive pleasure, parents began to reply that whether the boy liked it or not he must get that know- ledge somewhere. But where the experiment was really tried under good conditions it was soon found not only that the boys were willing to give three or four hours a week of their playtime to scientific subjects, but that the one or two hours filched from the curriculum were more than made up for by the greater ease with which the other subjects could be learnt, in consequence of the ad- ditional training of the mind which the new subjects gave. We may hope, then, that in the course of time our secondary education may be much improved in the direction indicated. What we may expect, taking the principle of natural selection as our guide, will be this. First, the headmasters will themselves be men chosen, among other grounds, for their knowledge of science ; they will become more and more all-round men. Next, the curriculum will be arranged not for the few who go to THE EDUCATION OF ARTIZANS. the University, but for the many who do not. We shall have more science and less Greek in the early years of the school course. We shall have laboratories, and drawing rooms, and workshops. In some schools we may find modern living languages taught in a living way, replacing the dead languages altogether. Now, here our difficulties begin. We are face to face indeed with the same difficulties which the Continental nations, our pre- cursors in educational matters, have experienced. Our secondary education is at the present moment all but absolutely separated from the primary one. Of the 4,000,000 scholars on the books of elementary schools last year there were only 44,000 over the age of fourteen, and it is to be feared that the remainder left school at that age, most of them, the best as well as the worst, to fight the battle of life with such an education as they had got up to that time. Germany, again, was the first to find out that this would never do, even though in i:hat country science and art were taught in the Primary School ; and for the reason that though such a meagre education might possibly do for ordinary workers in i:heir hives of industry, it was totally insufficient for the future foremen, overseers and the like ; and special schools were established to carry their education further. Quite of late years this question has been studied in the most interesting way in the Netherlands, under the advice of a wise minister, whose example will be iollowed some day in our own country. Let me briefly refer to it. This work began in 1863. In that year in Holland there were no middle class or secondary schools for artizans, but there were evening schools for drawing 32 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. which dated from 1872. " Burgher Schools " were estab- lished to provide the secondary instruction still felt to be needed by those who otherwise would have to content themselves with the primary instruction (although in its more extended form it contained natural philosophy, mathematics, and modern languages). In these schools — some day, some night schools (in these the lessons went on from September to May), with a course of two or three years — we find mathematics, theoretical and applied mechanics, mechanism, physics, chemistry, natural history, either technology or agriculture, drawing, gym- nastics and other subjects among the fixed subjects, modelling and foreign languages being permissive. These burgher schools were compulsory in all parishes of 10,000 inhabitants. The evening burgher schools especially were at once seized on with avidity, chiefly by apprentices and the like. Here let me give you some statistics which will show you how these schools were working even ten years ago. They are much more flourishing now, but I have not the figures. The statistics will show how the Dutch (of whom it cannot be said, to vary an old rhyme. In matters of learning the fault of the Dutch Is giving too httle and asking too much, for the instruction is practically free), who are already learning a trade or working at one, use the evening hours for the further cultivation of their minds. Number of students in Population. burgher schools. Delft - 23,000 - - 171 Utrecht - - 64,000 - - 283 Deventer - - 81,000 - - 285 , Dordrecht • - 26,000 - u^ M THE EDUCATION OF ARTIZANS. 33 .mong the students at these schools in 1874 were 1,582 carpenters and joiners, 472 smiths, &c., 236 plumbers and masons, 170 goldsmiths, engravers, &c., 320 painters, to give examples. Higher burgher schools were also estab- lished in the chief towns. In these schools still more advanced instruction was given : and here the course was for five years. In all these schools there was a considerable State endowment and an endowment on the part of the town, so that the fees were almost nominal, and in some cases even the instruction was gratuitous. When I was inspecting these schools in Holland with an eminent man of science, whose advice had helped largely to make them such a success, and when I expressed to him my astonishment at the smallness of the fees — only a very few shillings a year — he put before me the question of State aid to schools in a way which had never struck me before. He said : " We regard it as a sort of educa- tion insurance. A small tax is paid by everybody during the whole of his life, and in this way a man who brings up children for the service of the State is helped by him who skirks that responsibility ; and the payment which each citizen is called upon to make towards this instruc- tion is spread over his whole life, and does not come upon him when he is probably most pinched in other ways." Now for one practical result of the establishment of these schools. The year 1863 found Holland full of the notion that every hour a child spent away from the desk or the bench after thirteen was time wasted ; but after these burgher schools were instituted a change came rer the spirit of that dream, and now no employer of c 34 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PEOGRESS. labour in Holland, except of the lowest and most manual kind, will look at a boy who cannot produce a certificate from his burgher school. Another very remarkable thing was soon observed, with a most important moral for us. The great difference between their burgher schools and the old gymnasia, the equivalents of our grammar schools, was a gyeat infusion of science into the teaching, and the introduction of three modern languages in addition to Dutch ; Latin and Greek being omitted altogether from the curriculum. After four years of this training, many of the boys showed such high promise that all connected with them thought it a pity that they should not enter a university. They were therefore, as an experiment, allowed six months to take up Latin and Greek, and the result was that in a great number of cases they beat the gymnasia boys in their own subjects, and passed into the university with flying colours. The Eeal Schule in Germany and the modern sides of our own secondary schools are almost the exact equivalents of the higher burgher schools to which I have especially called your attention. What, then, is the experience which has been gained in! these gigantic educational experiments ; experiments by! which we may profit, as we are so late in the race, if we^ care to do so ? One point is that if a chance is put before those who have passed through the elementary schools of further culturing their minds, they seize upon it with avidity. Another is that the employers of labour appre- ciate the value of the greater intelligence thus brought about. It is better to have to instruct in a trade men who have shown themselves anxious to learn, than to have to do with blockheads. Another, I think, is this : Your best THE EDUCATION OF ARTIZANS. secondary school is best for everybody ; a secondary school with a properly mixed curriculum of literature, science and art, is best for him who proceeds either to the university or to the workshop. A second-rate education in a second-rate school gives us a second-rate man, and we do not want our national industries to be worked entirely by second-rate men. On this point I am glad to fortify what I have said by a reference to Dr. Siemens's important address at the Midland Institute some time ago. He says : — " It is a significant fact that while the thirty universities of Ger- many [you see they do not educate by halves in Germany, they have seven times as many universities as we have in England] continued to increase, both as regards number of students and high state of efficiency, the purely technical colleges, almost without exception, have during the last ten years been steadily receding, whereas the provincial Gewerbe Schulen have, under the progressive minister, von Falke, been modified so as to approximate their curriculum to that of the gymnasium or grammar school. As regards middle -class educa- tion, it must be borne in mind that at the age of sixteen, the lad is expected to enter upon practical life, and it has been held that under these circumstances at any rate it is best to confine the teaching to as many subjects only as can be followed up to a point of efficiency and have reference to future application. It is thus that the dis- tinction between the German gymnasium or grammar school and the Real Schule or technical school has arisen, a distinction which^ though sanctioned to some extent in this country, also by the in- stitution of the modern side, I should much like to see abohshed." We see then the gradually increasing weight of opinion, and the result of the experiments both in Germany and Holland, and I may add France, point to these conclusions. Some kind of secondary education must be provided for the best students when they leave the elementary school, either before they begin work or while they are C2 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. at work. Our secondary education should advance prac- tically along one line, how far soever the student goes along that line, some, of course, will go further than others, provided always that it is the best possible, that is, one having the broadest base. Now, if this be generally conceded, our problem in England, at the present moment, is simpler than we thought it. We are face to face with the fact that it is for the good of the nation that those who have passed most successfully through the elementary education must con- tinue that education in a secondary school ; whether for two, or for three, or for six years, matters little for the argument. Are we then to build technical schools for such students ? Thirty years ago the answer would have been yes. To-day we may say firmly, no. If a town has a grammar-school, let the town see that the curriculum of that school is based upon our best secondary models. If the town has no such school, then let it build one. If one school is not sufiicient, then build two. That school will be the best off in the long run which gives the greatest number of free exhibitions from the elementary school into such a school as this, and that town will be the wisest which holds out such inducements at the earliest possible moment. I have lately read with much interest a copy of resolu- tions and suggestions passed at a meeting of an Association of Elementary Teachers in the north of England. From these we may gather that this question is already one of practical politics. It is agreed that the secondary educa- tion of the best boys leaving the elementary schools must not end there. It is also taken for granted that the question lies between building a technical school or THE EDUCATION OF ARTIZANS. 37 Itilising the grammar school. One argument used in favour of the latter course is, that the grammar school will be strengthened by drawing to itself the best boys from the elementary schools. The present proposals are that a number of free scholarships should be competed for annually, that these free scholarships shall, if need be, be supplemented by exhibitions from the fund at the disposal of the Governors (I should not accept this at once. Why should not the town pay them ?), and the length of time for which these scholarships shall be tenable is not to be less than three years. You see, then, that in the north of England, at all events, it is conceded that the best children in our elemen- tary schools should have a three years' course in a school of higher grade in which all the class subjects in the Elementary Code will be expanded, and all the linguistic studies of the grammar school taken in hand. When this system is at work, as it is bound to be in a few yearo, two things will happen, and it is as well we should be prepared for them. In the first place, our secondary schools — all of one model, the best model, let it be understood — must so arrange the curriculum, that the students can leave after a three years' course, if need be, for the workshop or the office, or after a longer course for the University. That is the first point. The second one is this. The present system of apprenticeship must be reconsidered. A boy who has been educated to the age of sixteen will learn very much more in three or four years, and will be very much more valuable to his master during that time than he who was formerly bound apprentice at the age of thirteen or fourteen, with his fingers all thumbs and no mind to speak of. ^^',„ ^^^ or THE UNIVERSITY OF 38 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. It seems to me, as it does to a daily increasing number, that the present mode of dealing with those matters which were formerly regarded as arts and mysteries known only to a few, and carried on on a small scale under the eye of the master, is dead against the system of apprenticeship as it has come down to us. Now the master does not teach and the boy in nine cases out of ten has no oppor- tunity of grasping the iwhole of the art or mystery at all. Many of you will begin to think that you are listening to the play of Hamlet with the part of the Prince of Denmark omitted, for so far I have said nothing whatever about technical education. I have said nothing about it for the reason that I believe the less said to a boy about technical education before he is sixteen years old the better. I now proceed to discuss this question, which is far more im- portant, far more a national question, than you would gather from the debates in Parliament. What is technical education ? It is the application of the principles of science to the industrial arts. And the rock ahead against which I am anxious to join Dr. Siemens in warning you is this : Under the influence of the present scare — for it is a scare, and a real one — there is a chance that attempts may be made to teach the applications to those who are ignorant of principles, whereas we have to fight those who study applications with a full knowledge of the principles which underlie them. We may congratulate ourselves on the fact that when we have once made up our minds as to the right place of technical instruction in our scheme of education, we have much of the necessary machinery already at our disposal ; and the recent action of the City Guilds and of the I I THE EDUCATION OF ARTIZANS. 39 Government is enormously increasing the quantity and l^nproving the quality of this_machinery. Let us first consider the classes now formed all over the country under the auspices of the Science and Art Depart- ment. Their development in the last thirty years has been something truly marvellous. When the Queen, in 1852, opened Parliament, there Ig^ere already 35,000 students of art, but practically no students of science, in this country, amongst the industrial classes. That 35,000 will, if the present progress goes on, give us nearly 1,000,000 students of art at the end of this year ; while the science schools have increased from 82 in 1860 to 1,400 in 1880, with 69,000 students. The system which has thus developed so enormously has dealt chiefly with pure science, but for the future we shall have side by side with it, and built upon the same lines, a system of teaching the applications of this pure science to each of our national industries. He who wishes in the future to have to do in any way with the manufacture of alkali, gas, iron, paper or glass, to take some instances, or in the dyeing of a piece of silk or the making of a watch, to take others, will find the teaching brought to his door and obtainable almost for the asking. Here, again, we may congratulate ourselves, for while those who know most about the subject tell us that the more ambitious attempts at technical instruction in Ger- many and elsewhere have failed, because the teaching is not in sufficiently close contact with the works in which the processes are actually carried on, the system to which I have drawn your attention will enable the instruction to be given at night to those who have already begun [)ractical work during the day. 40 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. We have, then, come to this : that putting together what is most desirable in the abstract, and what has been practically proved to be the best, the education of our industrial classes should be, and can easily be, something like this. The boy will go to an elementary school till he is thirteen. He will then pass with an exhibition, if neces- sary, to a secondary school till he is sixteen. He will there go on with his science — now a class subject in the elementary school — and begin the study of languages. At sixteen he will leave school and begin the battle of life, and can still in the evening proceed further with his studies in pure science, if the secondary education has left him too ill-equipped in that direction. Having thus got the prin- ciples of pure science into his mind he will be able to take up the technical instruction in the particular industrial arfc to which he is devoting himself. But be the number of our future foremen and managers who have had this extra three years of secondary instruc- tion, large or small, if there be in Coventry let us say out of your population of 45,000, 1,000 boys, or girls, or men, who are anxious not only to learn science, but its appli- cation to their particular industries, then the Government is ready to endow Coventry with a sum varying from 2,000/. to 6,000/. a year, according to the results of the examinations, if two subjects of pure science are taken up, and the students pass. The City Guilds are pre- pared to endow the town with from 1,000/. to 2,000/. a year additional, provided some application of the principles of science to the industrial arts is taken up, and evidence forthcoming that the principles themselves have been studied. Now if among your 45,000 there is not 1,000 who care for these things which are vital to your trades, I THE EDUCATION OF ARTIZANS. 41 iflbeeing that abroad these things are cared for, how can your trades stand against foreign competition ? Let such \^ system as this go on for twenty years, and we shall hear nothing more of the decay of our national industries. Now here I am bound to point out a distinct gap in the present system. We have classes for art, classes for pure science, classes for applied science, but where are the classes Er languages ? The modern languages are taught so badly in our condary schools, that it is hopeless to expect that suffi- uient knowledge, either of French or German, can be ac- tuired in the three years' course to enable the student ) find out what his French and German rivals are doing I the branch of industry which he takes up ; and we must, moreover, consider those who may wake up to the importance of studying science and its technical applica- tions after the chance of a secondary education is lost. Such classes then are a real want. But I will not end my address by a reference to what I regard as an unfortunate gap, but would rather conclude what I have to say by pointing out that the scheme I have sketched out need be no Utopia, so far, at all events, as a supply of well-trained teachers is concerned. This, up to the present time, has been the real difficulty. But now that the authorities at South Kensington have started summer courses of lectures to teachers, and that they actually pay the teachers for going to learn, the method of teaching, both in the elementary and secondary schools, and evening classes, cannot fail to improve. Quite recently, too, we have seen the inauguration of a Normal School, where Royal Exhibitioners and other free students are admitted without payment ; where the 42 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. teacher has the first claim, and where he can attend any single course for a nominal fee. Now every town of importance in the country should associate itself with the Government in this attempt, and should have one, at least, of its citizens always in training there, so that the scientific instruction in that town, whether primary, secondary or tertiary, should always be at its highest level. On the other side of the road, too, at South Kensington, is rapidly rising another institution where we may hope the teachers of our technical instruction will receive an equally careful training. So that you see, to bring what I have to say to a con- clusion, though we are late in the day, though many people have not yet made up their minds as to what is best to be done — and I acknowledge that the question is hedged in with diflB.culties on all sides — there is an easy solution of the difficulty based on the experience of other countries, which is at the same time an act of simple justice ; that this solution requires, if we adopt it, no dislocation, but simply a natural growth of our existing means, and finally that all the newest developments of our educational machinery will fall naturally into place. THE EDUCATION QUESTION IN 1883. (1883.) We are a long-suffering patient people. The call of Luther to those around him to educate their children and make men of them, as well as provide them with arms — H call at once answered in Germany — is only just now being answered among ourselves. One of the most interesting and one of the most touching sights in London now, and one which in our view is a standing disgrace to the politicians who have held sway during the last hundred years, is the gradual rising above dingy roofs and millions of chimneys of the red brick board schools. The children in London at all events are now being educated, and our future masters are receiving the first rudiments of their instruction, and this much more on account of the intention of their fathers to have it for them than on account of any far-seeing policy of those who are popularly supposed to look in any and every direction for anything that may conduce to the well-being of our country. We have at last got a public instruction, and it is already in the air that that instruction will in time be as free as it is now compulsory. It is a heartbreaking thing to look back and think what might have been had these all too recently built schools overtopped the squalid 44 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. dwellings of the poor a century ago. How much less squalid those dwellings would be now ! The monumental and extensive prisons would probably be less occupied in their every cell than they are now, but the well-being of the country, the output of the country, would have been greater, and the struggle with penury, and dirt and crime would have been less. This is only one aspect of education, but yet it seems that in this country, at all events, it is the mainspring of public opinion with regard to the general question. The cry — on many grounds the mistaken cry — for technical instruction has grown from the work of the board schools ; it has gone along the same line at a higher level, and it will go on still further. The enormous development of the Government Science and Art Classes will also go on, and to the credit of the late Sir Henry Cole be it said here, that he was wiser than the politicians, and his clear sight and single-mindedness influenced the head of the depart- ment with which he was connected, so that the work in science and art begun by the Prince Consort in 1851, long before the present notions of the importance of education really began to take root in our land, has been making quiet progress. Now that compulsory education is in our midst, now that the importance of science and of art to the national industries is being gradually acknowledged, now that it is recognised that the education of our workmen must no longer be so disgracefully neglected as it has been, it is again suggested that there should be a Minister to look after these matters. Ten years ago, as it was well put, the Rinderpest was the care of the Government side by side with the Kinderpest. THE EDUCATION QUESTION IN 1883. 45 were practically on the same level, both were acknowledged to be nuisances, both might require a public department to look after them, and then money would have to be spent. This was quite a sufficient argument ■rith *' statesmen " to let things go on in the old harum- scarum way ; for the policy of a Government is to keep money in its purse, honestly if it can, but in any case to do so, as if England were a miser, acknowledging no responsibilities, spurning all delights, and wishing to live a sordid life like the burghers of old, caring only for their dykes and pikes, who were shamed out of their indifference centuries ago. There has again been a suggestion made that there should be a Minister of Public Instruction, who should be responsible for the preparedness of the country in this respect, just as the Minister of War is responsible for the preparedness of it in another direction. As long ago as 1856 the late Lord Derby said : — " It appeared to him well worthy of consideration whether it would not be well to have a Minister, or the head of a department, who should have no other duties to perform, and who should be, in fact, respon- sible for the education of the people ... He had a strong feeling that the institution of a Minister of Instruction was desirable, that the subject should be altogether separated from the Privy Council.*' But that did no good. In 1862 there was another reso- lution put to the House, calling on it to affirm that for the education estimates and for the expenditure of all moneys for the promotion of education, science and art a Minister of the Crown should be responsible to the House. That also did no good. In 1865 a Select Committee was moved for to inquire into the constitution of the Committee of the Council on Education. It was then urged that education 46 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. ^1 and science and art were beginning to be considered of such importance that — '' The great duty of superintending the various branches connected with the Department of Education should be intrusted to some one responsible Minister, some Minister who should be regarded as a State officer of high authority, who should have the sole conduct of that department, and be solely responsible." And that was shelved. Nine years later, in ^874, the same view was urged, and Mr. Gladstone as Prime Minister admitted — " That there was much to be said in favour of the general principle that the expenditure of money for the promotion of education in science and in art should be placed under the control of a single responsible Minister." It is true he said this, but he supported the previous question, so that again came to nothing. Now that education and science are the great things of the day, not only in this but in all countries, England enjoys the proud pre-eminence of being'the only country — civilised country, we know nothing of Timbuctoo — in which there is not a Minister of Public Instruction. It is lamentable, terrible, to read the debates, and to see the way in which the question was discussed. The importance of education, the importance of science, the importance of art — the daily, almost hourly, increasing importance of these things — do not seem to have entered into the question. To a large extent it was merely a question of Cabinet convenience and Parliamentary tweedledum and tweedledee. How can there be made room in the Cabinet for a Minister of Public Instruction ? Are not the affairs of the Duchy of Lancaster of much greater importance, and would not the recognition of the'^importance^of education Tmake the Cabinet unwieldy and give rise to difficulties in I I THE EDUCATION QUESTION IN 1883. 47 Parliamentary procedure ? And then there is the Scotch business that must be looked after first, and so on, and so on. Education is evidently not in the regions of tractical politics. Heaven knows changes sufficiently great have been made of late years, and it is not absolutely certain that the funda- mental bearings of the nature of the changes to be made have in all cases been fully considered ; but it seems as if they are to be most carefully considered before any change is made touching the matter of education. Still it is acknowledged that the question is, after all, one that deserves the attention of Parliament. Mr. Glad- stone, however, had, as usual, three objections to make. In the first place he expressed very great doubt whether, if he had a plan ready to alter the present arrangement, it would be wise to make any declaration on the subject by way of motion. Secondly, he admitted that there was no plan, and he did not think the time had arrived for one ; and lastly, he considered that the subject ought to be a great deal more examined before the House committed itself to a final opinion whether there should be a plan or not. With reference to his first objection he stated that the House knew perfectly well that administrative changes are made piecemeal, and must continue to be so ; and he remarked that there was a good deal to be said in favour of what was called a patched house, because most of us found it the most comfortable sort of house to live in. A Minis- ter of Public Instruction would be a new patch, and as there is patching going on elsewhere he objects to this ; and so on, and so on. ^■f The argument which he used in favour of the second 48 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. objection was, we imagine, the strongest he could have used against it, namely, that the business of the Council Office in respect to education has been in an almost incessant state of flux and change ; there can be no doubt that the flux and change will get more pronounced as time goes on. That is the very reason why everything should be brought to a focus. We may gather from Mr. Gladstone's speech that the Universities should ever, in his opinion, remain divorced from the general question of education ; but if so, what is to become of Professor Huxley's ladder from the gutter to the university ? It is worth while to cull the following from the speech of Mr. Foster, an old Vice-President of the Committee of the Council on Education : *' The Committee of the Council for Trade, or Agriculture, or Educa- tion meant nothing whatever. Persons might imagine that the Privy Council occasionally met for the transaction of business, but they never did so either in England or Ireland. The Minister for Agri- culture was the President of the Committee of the Council on Agri- culture, but he greatly doubted whether that Committee ever met, or ever would meet. . . The real objection (to Sir John Lubbock's proposal) probably was that it was undesirable to make too much of education, that if we were to have a Minister of Education he might be pushing things on too quickly. . . There might be a fea: that under one Minister too much money would be spent. . . What was complained of now was that there was no really defined responsibility. The man who moved the Estimates and did the work was not the head of a Department, and he ought to be. The work was done by a Minister who was con- trolled by another, and the latter was scarcely seen by the pubHc. He did not see why we should continue that Japanese mode of managing affairs." It is satisfactory to see that the House of Commons is gradually getting into a better position to discuss such questions as these, but we have felt that the main point is 1 THE EDUCATION QUESTION IN 1883. 49 tnat the head of the Government does not yet consider that the question of education is one of importance suffi- cient to be discussed side by side with what in his opinion is the much larger question of Parliamentary procedure It is true a Select Committee has been agreed to, but it is to be feared that after Mr. Gladstone's speech very little will come of it, as has happened before. The result remains that we are not to have a Minister of Education. There is agricultural business, including the rinderpest and other matters, and these are larger questions than that of national education ! Therefore national education must wait. As was said before, we are a long-suffering and patient people. There is, how- ever, little doubt that in some political programme of the future this question will find a place ; equal electoral districts and the payment of members are not the only things to be cared for. LORD PLAYFAIR AND OTHERS ON OUR EDUCATIONAL NEEDS. ' (1885.) If it be fair to forecast the success of a meeting of the British Association by the quality of the addresses delivered by the various presidents, then it may be predicted that the meeting in 1885 at Aberdeen, with Lyon Playfairas President, will long stand out among its fellows. The growing use, as well as the growing feeling for the need, of scientific methods comes out in a most unmistak- able way, while there is no fear that either hearers or readers will be lulled into a sleepy hollow of satisfaction or a rest-and-be-thankful feeling. For that much remains to be done even in the way of initial organisation both of teaching and working is frankly and fearlessly acknow- ledged by several of the speakers. These present needs, pointed out by the President of the Association himself, who speaks both as a man of science and a politician, may well occupy our attention. No one knows better than Sir Lyon Playfair how science can aid the body politic, or knows better how each party when in office neglects or uses this powerful engine for the nation's good. He begins by quoting these noble words from the address of the President at the Aberdeen meeting in 1859 — the lamented Prince Consort ; I OF OUR EDUCATIONAL NEEDS. 51 " We may be justified in hoping . . . that the Legislature and the State will more and more rejognisc the t-laims of science to their attention^ 80 that it may no longer require the begging box, but speak to the State like a favoured child to its parent, sure of his paternal solicitude for its welfare ; that the State will recognise in science one of its elements of strength and prosperity, to foster which the clearest dictates of Self-interest demand." One can get no better idea of the Philistine condition of the Government and of the House of Commons in matters of science than from the fact that much of what follows in the President's Address has not been said in the House itself instead of at Aberdeen. The real reason, perhaps, is to be gathered from a remark made by Pro- fessor Chrystal in his address in Section A : *' We all have a great respect for the integrity of our British legis- lators, whatever doubts may haunt us occasionally as to their capacity in practical affairs. The ignorance of many of them regarding some of the most elementary facts that bear on every-day life is very sur- prising. Scientifically speaking, uneducated themselves, they seem to think that they will catch the echo of a fact or the solution of an arithmetical problem by putting their ears to the sounding-shell of uneducated public opinion. When I observe the process which many such people employ for arriving at what they consider truth, I often think of a story I once heard of an eccentric Grerman student of chemistry. This gentleman was idle, but, like all his nation, systematic, When he had a precipitate to weigh, instead of resorting to his balance, he would go the round of the laboratory, hold up the test-tube before each of his fellow-students in turn, and ask him to guess the weight. He set down all the replies, took the average, and entered the result in his analysis." Now if this view of our legislators is shared by men of such acumen as Sir Lyon Playfair and others in the House of Commons more or less connected with science, we can well understand their silence in the modern council of the nation which so little resembles the Witanagemote of former times. D3 52 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. In his pleading for more State recognition of science the President points out the present activity of Ger- many and France, and especially of the United States : "... Both France and Germany make energetic efforts to advance science with the aid of their national resources. More remarkable is it to see a young nation like the United States reserving 150,000,000 acres of national lands for the promotion of scientific education. In some respects this young country is in advance of all European nations in joining science to its administrative offices. Its scientific pub- lications, like the great palaeontological work embodying the re- searches of Professor Marsh and his associates in the Geological Survey, are an example to other Governments. The Minister of Agriculture is surrounded with a staff of botanists and chemists. The Home Secretary is aided by a special scientific Commission to investigate the habits, migrations and food of fishes, and the latter has at its disposal two specially constructed steamers of large tonnage. The United States and Great Britain promote fisheries on distinct systems. In this country we are perpetually issuing expensive Commissions to visit the coasts in order to ascertain the experiences of fishermen. I have acted as Chairman of one of these Royal Commissions, and found that the fishermen, having only a knowledge of a small area, gave the most contradictory and unsatisfactory evidence. In America the questions are put to Nature, and not to fishermen. Exact and searching investigations are made into the life-history of the fishes, into the temperature of the sea in which they live and spawn, into the nature of their food and into the habits of their natural enemies. For this purpose the Government give the co-operation of the Navy and provide the Commission with a special corps of skilled naturalists, some of whom go out with the steamships, and others work in the biological laboratories at Wood's Hall, Massachusetts, or at Washing- ton. . . The practical results flowing from those scientific investiga- tions have been important. The inland waters and rivers have been^ stocked with fish of the best and most suitable kinds. Even the^ great ocean which washes the coasts of the United States is begin- ning to be affected by the knowledge thus acquired, and a sen- sible result is already produced upon the most important of its fisheries. The United Kingdom largely depends upon its fisheries, but as yet our own Government have scarcely realised the value of such scientific investigations as those pursued with success by the] United States." )UR EDUCATIONAL KEEDS. 53 m He quotes with approval a passage from Washington's farewell to his countrymen : " Promote as an object of primary importance institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a Govern- ment gives force to public opinion it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." He next points out that it was not till 1870 that England established a system of education at al), and that now, while all great countries except our own have Ministers of Education, we have only Ministers who are managers of primary schools. Passing on to the State need of abstract knowledge we read as follows : Ali, the son-in-law of Mahomet, the fourth successor to the Cali- phate, urged upon his followers that men of science and their disciples give security to human progress. AU loved to say, ' Eminence in science is the highest of honours ' ; and ' He dies not who gives life to learn- ing.' 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 boun- daries of knowledge. English Governments alone fail to grasp the fact that the competition of the world has become a competition in intellect." We have seen how Sir Lyon Playfair twits the heads of the Education Department with being merely managers of primary schools. The President of the Chemical iBPection, Professor Armstrong, also shows reason why their functions must be expanded if science is ever to get on here. He holds that without State action the diffi- culties which at present prevent the existing teaching institutions from exercising their full share of influence upon the advancement of our national prosperity are all but insuperable. He foresees the objection that such an interference would deprive teaching centres of their EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. individuality, but lie denies that this must necessarily follow, and we know no one who has a better right to express an opinion on such a subject. Some part, indeed, of Professor Armstrong's address is terrible reading. The present chemical education and chemical examinations in this country are, according to him, to a large extent shams and worse. The students who come to the centres of higher instruction are scarcely reasoning beings — they have never been brought to reason ; and at those centres the instruction has been of too technical a character, while hardly anywhere is there an atmosphere of research. He points out, among many other matters, the vital importance of the research atmosphere, and he frankly states the difficulties felt by earnest men. Many of the remarks so often made now touching the absence of research in our chemical laboratories apply not to such men as him, but to those whose trading spirit and proclivities are well known — men who discredit the profession to which they belong. Still, it is well that the difficulties should be fairly recorded, especially in juxtaposition with a statement that absence of research must always indicate the absence of teaching worthy of the name. A complete revision of the present system, both of teaching and examining in chemistry, is, therefore, accord- ing to Professor Armstrong, one of the most pressing of our present needs. Are the other sciences better off ? Certainly not mathe- matics if Professor Chrystal has a right to speak for that branch : " All men practically engaged in teaching who have learned enough, in spite of the defects of their own early training, to enable them to OUR EDUCATIONAL NEEDS. ke a broad view of the matter, are agreed as to the canker which 'turns everything that is good in our educational practice to evil. It is the absurd prominence of written competitive examinations that rrks all this mischief." But some may think that in the setting of problems mathematics teachers have an advantage over others in preventing unintelligent cramming. This is not Professor hrystal's opinion : [ in *' The history of this matter of problems, as they are called, illustrates in a singularly instructive way the weak point of our English system education. They originated, I fancy, in the Cambridge Mathe- atical Tripos Examination, as a reaction against the abuses of cram- ming bookwork, and they have spread into almost every branch of science teaching — witness test-tubing in chemistry. At first they may have been a good thing ; at all events the tradition at Cambridge was strong in my day, that he that could work the most problems in three or two and a half hours was the ablest man, and, be he ever so ignorant of his subject in its width and breadth, could afford to despise those less gifted with this particular kind of superficial sharp- ness. But, in the end, it all came to the same ; we were prepared for problem working in exactly the same way as for bookwork. We were directed to work through old problem papers, and study the style and peculiarities of the day and of the examiner. The day and the examiner had, in truth, much to do with it, and fashion reigned in problems as in everything else. The only difference I could ever see between problems and bookwork was the greater predominance of the inspiriting element of luck in the former. This advantage was more than compensated for by the peculiarly disjointed and, from a truly scientific point of view, worthless nature of the training which was employed to cultivate this species of mental athletics. The result, 80 far as problems worked in examinations go, is, after ul], very miser- able, as the reiterated complaints of examiners show ; the effect on the examinee is a well-known enervation of mind, an almost incurable superficiality, which might be called Problematic Paralysis — a disease which unfits a man to follow an argument extending beyond the length of a printed octavo page." As to the crying present need, Professors Ohrystal d Armstrong are at one. We want a higher ideal 56 EDUCATIOl^ AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. m of education in general, and of scientific education in particular : " Science cannot live among the people and scientific education cannot be more than a wordy rehearsal of dead text-books, unless we have living contact with the working minds of living men. It takes the hand of God to make a great mind, but contact with a great mind will make a little mind greater. The most valuable instruction in any art or science is to sit at the feet of a master, and the next best to have contact with another who has himself been so instructed. No agency that I have ever seen at work can compare for efficiency with an intelli- gent teacher who has thoroughly made his subject his own. It is by providing such, and not by sowing the dragon's teeth of examinations, that we can hope to raise up an intelligent generation of scientifically educated men who shall help our race to keep its place in the struggle of nations. In the future we must look more to man and to ideas, and trust less to mere systems. Systems have had their trial. In particular, systems of examinations have been tested and found wanting in nearly every civilised country on the face of the earth." What we have written will show what food for thought in the matter of our present needs has been provided at Aberdeen for those gathered together for the advancement of science. Surely the three addresses specially referred to suggest a gap in the organisation of the Association. Why should there not be a section to deal specially with the question of education and research ? ■i SCIENCE AND EDUCATION DURING VICTORIA'S REIGN. (1887.) Most of the celebrations connected with the fiftieth anniversary of the Queen's accession will soon have taken iplace ; and in London, at all events, the gorgeous cere- Hbonials now being prepared will have been the admiration of hundreds and thousands of Her Majesty's loyal subjects. I^t is therefore quite right and fitting that we should ■^^well for one moment on the subject now uppermost in all minds, and dear to most British hearts. In loyalty the students of Nature in these islands are second to none, I^nd their gladness at the happy completion of the fifty ^Bears' reign, and their respect for the fifty years' pure and ^Beautiful life, are also, we believe, second to none. But ^he satisfaction which they feel on these grounds is tem- pered when they consider, as men of science must, all the conditions of the problem. The fancy of poets and the necessity of historians have from time to time marked certain ages of the world's history and distinguished them from their fellows. The golden age of the past is now represented by the scientific age of the present. Long after the names of all men who have lived on this planet during the Queen's reign, with the ex- ception of such a name as that of Darwin, are forgotten, 58 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. when the name of Queen Victoria even has paled, it will be recognised that in the latter half of the nineteenth cen- tury a new era of the world's history commenced. What- ever progress there has been in the history of any nation during the last fifty years — and this is truer of England than of any other country — the progress has been mainly due to labourers in the field of pure science, and to the applications of the results obtained by them to the purposes of our daily and national life. It is quite true that some men of Science take a pride in the fact that all this scientific work has been accomplished not only with the minimum of aid from the State, but without any sign of sympathy with it on the part of the powers that be. We venture to doubt whether this pride is well founded. It is a matter of fact, whatever the origin of the fact may be, that during the Queen's reign, since the death of the lamented Prince Consort, there has been an impassable gulf between the highest culture of the nation and royalty itself. The brain of the nation has been divorced from the head. Literature and science, and we might almost add art, have no access to the throne. Our leaders in science, our leaders in letters, are personally unknown to Her Most Gracious Majesty. We do not venture to think for one moment that either Her Majesty or the leaders in question suffer from this condition of things ; but we believe it to be detrimental to the State, inasmuch as it must end by giving a perfectly false perspective ; and to the thoughtless the idea may rise that a great nation has nothing whatever to do either with literature, science or art — that, in short, culture in its widest sense is a useless excrescence, and SCIENCE AND THE QUEEN'S REIGN. properly unrecognised by royalty on that account, while the true men of the nation are only those who wield the sword, or struggle for bishoprics or for place in some political party for pay and power. The worst of such a state of things is that a view which is adopted in high quarters readily meets with general accep- tance, and that even some of those who have done good service to the cause of learning are tempted to decry the studies by which their spurs have been won. If literature is a "good thing to be left," as Sir George Trevelyan has told us, if Mr. Morley, the politician, looks back with a half- contemptuous regret to the days when he occupied a " more humble sphere " as a leader of literature, if students are recommended to cultivate research only " in the seed-sowing time of life ; " are not these things a proof that something is " rotten in the State," even in this Jubilee year ? It surely is well that literature, science and art should be cultivated by men who are willing to lay aside Igar ambition of wealth and rank, if only they may add the stock of knowledge and beauty which the world possesses. It surely is not well that no intellectual pre- eminence should condone for the lack of wealth or political place, and that as far as neglect can do it each scientific and literary man should be urged to leave work, the collective performance of which is nevertheless essential to the vitality of the nation. It would seem that this view has some claims for con- sideration when we note what happens in other civilised countries. If we take Germany, or France, or Italy, or Austria, we find there that the men of science and literature are recognised as subjects who can do the State some ser- vice, and as such are freely welcomed into the councils of 60 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGHESS. the Sovereign. With us it is a matter of course that every Lord Mayor shall, and every President of the Royal Society shall not, be a member of the Privy Council ; and a British Barnum may pass over a threshold which is denied to a Darwin, a Stokes or a Huxley. Our own impression is that this treatment of men of culture does not depend upon the personal feelings of the noble woman who is now our Queen. We believe that it simply results from the ignor- ance of those by whom Her Majesty is, by an unfortunate necessity, for the most part surrounded. The courtier class in England is — and it is more its misfortune than its fault — interested in few of those things upon which the greatness of a nation really depends. Literary culture some of them may have obtained at the universities, but of science or of art, to say nothing of applied science and applied art, they for the most part know nothing ; and to bring the real leaders of England between themselves and the Queen's Majesty would be to commit a hetise for which they would never be forgiven in their favourite coteries. No subject — still less a courtier — should be compelled to demonstrate his own insignificance. That this is the real cause of the present condition of things which is giving rise to so many comments that we can no longer neglect them, is, we think, further evidenced by the arrangements that have been made for the Jubilee ceremonial in Westminster Abbey. The Lord Chamberlain and his staff, who are responsible for these arrangements, have, it is stated, in- vited only one Fellow of the Royal Society, as such, to be present in the Abbey ; while with regard to literature we believe not even this single exception has been made. It may be an excellent thing for men of science like Professor Huxley, Professor Adams and Dr. Joule, and such a man of SCIENCE AND THE QUEEN'S REIGN. 61 iterature as Mr. Robert Browning, that they should not be required to attend at such a ceremonial, but it is bad for the ceremonial. The same system has been applied to the P (Government officials themselves. Thus, the department ponsible for science and art has, we believe, received four kets, while thirty-five have, according to Mr. Plunket's tement in the House, been distributed among the lower clerks in the House of Commons. Her Gracious Majesty suffers when a ceremonial is rendered not only ridiculous but contemptible by such maladministration. England is not represented, but only England's paid officials and nobodies. While we regret that there should be these notes of dis- |B|i|ord in the present condition of affairs, there can be no question that Her Majesty may be perfectly assured that the most cultured of her subjects are among the most loyal to her personally, and that they join with their fellow- subjects in many lands in hoping that Her Majesty may be IHiong spared to reign over the magnificent Empire on which Bhe sun never sets, and the members of which science in the future will link closer together than she has been able to do in the past. EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY. (1895.) At last the daily press is beginning to see the necessity of State action to prevent as far as possible the ruining of many of our industries threatened by the development of scientific research and processes in other countries. The Times'^ has spoken out with no uncertain sound in connection with the often repeated cases in which, in various foreign markets, English are being replaced by German goods. The paragraph to which we refer runs as follows : — " Our Berlin correspondent called attention two days ago to the immense strides made by German industry during the last quarter of a century, and to the failure of our Government to pay any adequate attention to a development so closely concerning British interests. In this commercial age this industrial nation has one commercial Attache in Paris who is supposed to keep an eye upon all Europe, and one at St. Petersburg, who has all Asia for his province. A commercial Attache at Berlin for Germany alone would find ample occupation and would furnish knowledge of things that deeply concern us, which it may be feared neither the Government nor the mercantile classes of this country possess at present. We also require urgently a commercial Attache with especial qualifications for the Far East. Yesterday our Paris correspondent informed us that on his first appearance as Minister for Foreign Affairs M. Berthelot asked money for the estabhshment of six new consulates in China. The contrast is sufficiently striking November 27, 1895, II EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY. between the policy of the two countries and the difference runs through the entire treatment of the material interests of the two peoples. Both in Germany and in France it is held an essential part of the duty of the State to second, and not only to second, but to stimulate and direct the efforts of private enterprise. In this country, though State inter- ference with commerce is being carried to a dangerous length, State assistance, even in the way of collecting information, is regarded with stupid distrust and disfavour. Our home industries themselves in many cases languish for want of intelligent direction. Our agricultural distress might be alleviated were the State not far above the education of the population in the minor agricultural arts, and the organisation of agricultural industries after the manner in vogue on the Continent. In the same way, although nothing can excuse the short-sighted folly of our manufacturing classes in not providing for scientific research in the various branches of industry, yet it is the duty of a wise Govern- ment to take measures to counteract the folly of classes when it threatens the general interest. In one word. Great Britain stands at this moment in imminent danger of being beaten out of the most lucrative fields of commerce, simply because it does not recognise, while other nations do, the value of scientific organisation in the field, in the workshop, in the laboratory and in the conduct of national policy." The public meeting to promote a memorial to Huxley reminds us how much we have lost — how much weaker we are for his absence. Never was Huxley more emphatic than when he pleaded, years ago, for the organisation of our scientific forces, so as to secure the victories of peace. It is now certain that we have lost many of these peaceful battles, and that we shall lose more, because our legislators have either not read the signs of the times, or have been led by those who, if they were consistent, would bring back our Navy to its state in Queen Elizabeth's time, when it was the outcome of individual and local effort. It is encouraging to think that when the attention of the commercial classes has been drawn to what is happen- ing, as it must be before long, and when the public will possess full knowledge of the utter chaos of our public 64 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. departments in all things appealing to the national life so far as it depends upon commercial enterprise under the existing conditions, some action must be taken. We have Committees of the Privy Council for this and that and the other departments, but where are the Scientific Privy Councillors ? Where are the meetings held at which they give the State the benefit of their knowledge ? In what record do we find the minutes of such " My Lords " as these ? It is not fair even to the administrators of the several departments that the present state of things should be allowed to exist. Too few of these have been chosen on account of their scientific knowledge, and as each question arises they have to pick up their information as best they can. There are several ways of doing this, one of them indicated by the Board of Trade inquiry into the revised regulations referring to the Electric Lighting Acts. The Conference showed conclusively how much the Department gained by the free imparting of know- ledge by outsiders, But this is only one direction in which reforms are needed. The Chambers of Commerce throughout the country must sooner or later take the matter up ; and when this is done, many other ways of abolishing the existing chaos will suggest themselves. (1896.) ^SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION IN GERMANY AND B ENGLAND. I^" Professor Ramsay has done good service by communi- cating to The Times a letter he has received from Professor ■Ntwald of the highest importance at the present time, when, fortunately for us, German supremacy along many lines of applied science and the causes of it are being at last recognised. No one has a better right to speak on this subject than Professor Ostwald, and the fact that we may take his com- munication as one made in the interests of British science Ij^akes it all the more valuable. What he says will be no news to those who for years past have been pointing out the rocks ahead and the steps necessary to avoid them ; but their voice has been as that of one crying in the wilderness. Fortunately for us this is so no longer. The Times devotes a leader to Dr. Ost- wald' s letter, but it does not appear that even The Times is in real touch with the actual position. " The Germans have found that nothing pays so well as knowledge, and that new knowledge always pays in the long run. They act on this - principle by maintaining a steady demand for men competent to extend the domain of theoretical knowledge, paying them well for doing it, and taking their chance of one valuable practical discovery turning up among a score that for the present lead to nothing. How good that 66 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. chance is may be judged from the enormous success attending German chemical industries of all kinds. Germany controls the fine chemical markets of the world, and that means that she takes tax and toll of almost every industry in every country. How easily we might have forestalled her can be fully understood only by those who know what a splendid start we had in capital, in machinery, in control of markets, and in root ideas. Some of her most lucrative industries have been developed out of English discoveries, due to the genius of individual Englishmen, but never properly grasped and worked out by English manufacturers. Her commercial domain will go on extending, and ours proportionately shrinking, unless Englishmen become practical enough to look beyond their noses, and wise enough to believe in knowledge." This is excellent ; but then we are also told — " For any healthy reform we want driving power, and the driving power must come from manufacturers enlightened enough to understand the secret of German success and English failure. It is industry that must endow research, not from any unpractical desire to add to the number of useless persons who know all that has been done, yet do not know how to do anything new, but from the very practical desire of manufacturers to extend their business and add to their profits." And again : — " There is a clamour now and again for State aid, and Dr. Ostwald's letter will, perhaps, stimulate it, because he refers to the action of the State in Germany. But the root of the matter in Germany lies in private enterprise, and it must do so here. Heaven helps those who help themselves, and the State cannot do better than observe the same limitation. When industry endows research it will be time to ask for assistance from the taxpayer. Until then State endowment of research can mean little more than throwing money away upon abstract acquire- ments having no real relation to the facts of national prosperity." Let us accept for a moment that " industry," " manu- facturers," and " private enterprise " in Britain at once proceed to do all that The Times lays at their doors. What then ? Professor Ostwald answers this question by telling us what the Prussian Government and the various German States have done and are doing for research e^nd scientific education, above and bej^ond all the efforts GERMAN' EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 07 made by German " industry," *' manufacturers " and *' private enterprise." In such a competition Britain, without the State aid ao amply and wisely given in Germany, is certain to lose. It has already been pointed out, and it is worth while to re-state it, that the connection between out national greatness, our national defences and our commerce, is universally recognised, and that the State spends, and properly spends, tens of millions a year, the protection of our commerce being assigned as one of the ostensible reasons. But another thing which as yet is not generally re- cognised is that so surely as our national greatness is based upon our industries, as surely in the future must our industries be based upon science. It is clear, therefore, that if in other countries the advancement of science is the duty not only of individuals, but of States, mere individual effort in any one country must be crushed out in the international competition which is growing keener and keener every day. Taking things as we find them, we spend tens of millions a year to protect our commerce which is a measure of our industries ; while the basis of these, science, is to remain unprotected, unorganised and unaided, except by local efforts and the action of individuals. Surely such a contention cannot be seriously main- tained — such inconsistent action can have no logical basis. The real remedy lies in consistently organising both our peace and our war forces, as Huxley pointed out many years ago. We have now a War or Industries- protecting Council : by the side of it we want a Peace or Industries-producing Council ; in other words, a strong 68 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. Minister of Science, who shall have as complete a staff of men of science to advise him as the President of the War Council finds himself provided with in the heads of the Army and Navy Departments. Only in this way can Germany's flank be turned. If it were only a question of ironclads how readily every- body would agree. Another part of Professor Ostwald's letter, ior which thanks are due, is that in which he points out that in Germany research is as important an engine in Education as it is in a Chemical Works ; so that again the call upon " private enterprise " is not sufficient. Here, of course, the whole question of our University organisation is raised. We cannot pursue it now, but we may quote a pregnant passage from Professor Fitzgerald — " The most serious cause of complaint of modern society against the old universities is that they have so controlled the education of the wealthy classes of the community, that the landed and professional classes have been educated apart from the commercial and industrial classes, to the very great injury of both." This is the reason that the true condition of things has not been appreciated long ago. It is not understood, and therefore it is not believed. Our political leaders, the permanent chiefs of the various public departments, have not the slightest idea what all this fuss is about, because their education has been entirely apart from those regions of thought and work in which in the future the peaceful battles of the world will be fought and won ; if not by us, then by others, for fighting there must be. No better argument could be found for the establish- ment of a ministry and council of science than was afforded by two speeches delivered some little time ago by the Duke of Devonshire on matters connected with scientific GERMAN EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 69 [ucation. The Duke candidly confessed at Birmingham Lat he was not placed at the head of the educational and scientific affairs of the country on account of any special knowledge of the subjects, for " his knowledge of science and art could be compressed into two nutshells." It is not our desire to utter one word against the Duke of Devonshire for his candour ; he has shown that he is interested in technical education, and has on more than one occasion assisted the work of science. But what we do criticise is the political system which does not consider it necessary that the educational and scientific welfare of the country should be the business of those Hbio are able to appreciate the work done, to see the necessity of reforms, and to know the directions in which developments should take place. In almost every other country the State or Government has official men of science among its servants, and also constantly asks the advice and assistance of their academies and learned societies, when questions of technical and scientific public IHtaLterest are under discussion ; but here no such use is Hade, either of the societies as a whole, or of the men ^^Rio constitute them. [Professor Ostwald's letter ran as follows ; it is so im- Hortant that I reprint it here : — Hm^Iii our frequent disoussions on scientific education, we have both ^ten been struck with some points of very great difference between the English and the German way of dealing with it. As it may be asserted without national arrogance that University education is in Germany in a more satisfactory condition than in your country, you are, of course, anxious to know which of the German customs I consider most effectrve in bringing about this better state of things ; and I will, therefore, try to point them out. Of course, I shall confine myself to the subject of natural science, and especially chemistry ?0 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. and physics, feeling myself unable to deal with sciences beyond niy" knowledge. The main point of our system may be expressed in on word — freedom — freedom of teaching and freedom of learning. The first involves for the teacher the necessity of forming in his mind a clear conception of the scope of his science, for, as he is free to choose any possible method of view, he feels himself answerable for the particu- lar one he has chosen. And in the same way the student feels himself responsible for the method and the subject of his studies, inasmuch as he is free to choose any teacher and any subject. One who has not seen this system in action may be incHned to think that such a system must lead to arbitrary and irresponsible methods on the side of the teacher, and to confusion on the part of the student. But the former is avoided, because at the beginning of his career the teacher is dependent for his advancement on the results of his scientific views, and is naturally anxious to improve his position in the educational world. And as for the students, they themselves impose certain restrictions on their own freedom. Most of them feel that they require some advice and guidance, and they therefore follow the usual and approved order in conducting their studies. As to the inventive man of original ideas, it has often been proved that for him any way is almost as good as any other, for he is sure to do his best anywhere. Moreover, such a man very soon excites the interest of one of his teachers, and is personally led by him, generally to the great advantage of both. *'Let me illustrate these general remarks by considering the course followed by an average chemist. In his first half-year he hears lectures on inorganic chemistry, physics, mineralogy, sometimes botany, and of late often differential calculus. Moreover, the German student is accustomed to take a more or less strong interest in general philosophy or history, and to add in his Bdeghuch (list of lectures) to the above- named Fachcollegien (specialised studies) one or two lectures on phil- osophy, general or German history, or the like. Very often there are in the University one or more popular professors whose lectures are heard by students of all faculties without reference to their special studies. The student who has heard during his stay at the University only lectures belonging strictly to his Fach is not well thought of and is to some extent looked down on as a narrow speciaHst. But I must add that such views are not prevalent in all faculties, and there are some — e.g., the faculty of law — whose students confine themselves, with few exceptions, to attending exclusively lectures in that faculty. ** In the second half-year the chemical student begins with practical laboratory work. Notwithstanding the perfect freedom of the teachers. GfiRMAN EDUCATIONAL METHODS. the system first introduced by Liebig into his laboratory at Giessen is still universally adopted in German universities and technical high schools — viz., qualitative and quantitative chemical analysis, the former conjoined with simple spectroscopic work, the latter amplified by volumetric analysis. This is followed by a course of chemical iPl^reparations, formerly chiefly inorganic, now chiefly organic. Even here, a regular system is being widely developed owing to the use of some well-known text-books. Of late years this course is followed IHl^ some laboratories by a series of exercises in physical chemistry '^nd electro-chemistry. ** While these practical exercises, which last for three or four half" years, are being carried out, the student completes his knowledge of physics, mathematics, and the other alUed sciences by hearing lectures and working practically in the physical and often also in some other laboratory. The exercises done, he goes to the professor and asks him for a ' theme ' to begin his * work ' — viz., his dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. This is the most important moment in his life as a student, for it generally determines the special line of his future career. The * theme ' is usually taken from the particular branch of the subject at which the professor himself is working ; but, as the scientific name and position of the professor depends, not only on his own work, but to a large extent on the work issuing from his laboratory, he is careful not to limit himself to too narrow a range of his science. *' Of course it is best of all if the student selects for himself a suitable * theme,' suggested to him by his lectures or practical work, or from private study of the literature of the science. But this seldom happens, for the young student is not yet able to discern the bearing of special questions and lacks knowledge how to work them out. Sometimes (but not very often, indeed) he points out to his professor in a general way the kind of problems he would Uke to work at, and the professor suggests to him a special problem out of this range of subjects. During the working out of his chosen subject the student learns generally much more than he has heard at lectures. Every part of the investiga- tion forces him to revise the scientific foundations of the operations he performs. During this time the incidental short lectures given by the professor on his daily round from one to another of the advanced students are most effective in deepening and strengthening the student's knowledge. As these explanatory remarks are generally heard, not only by the student whose work has caused them, but also by a number of fellow-students working near, a fairly wide range of scientific n EDUCATTON" AM) NATTON-AL PROaRESS. questions are dealt with in tlieir hearing. Often these small lectures develop themselves into discussions, and, as for myself, I judge from the frequency of such discussions between the students whether the session will turn out a good one or not. If the professor thinks the work sufficiently complete to be used as a dissertation, the student proceeds to the close of his studies. He prepares himself for the examination, which is conducted by the very professors whose lectures he has heard and in whose laboratories he has worked. This examina- tion varies somewhat in different universities, but in no case is it either very long or extensive ; indeed, it is not considered as very important. For we are all aware what an uncertain means of determining a man's knowledge and capabiUties an examination is, and how much its issue depends upon accidental circumstances. Part of this uncertainty is removed by the fact that the professor and the pupil know each other, are acquainted with one another's modes of expression and scientific views. The main purpose of the examination is to induce the student to widen his knowledge to a greater extent than is covered by the subject of his dissertation ; but, indeed, it happens very seldom that a student whose work is considered sufficient does not pass the examination. " We have no great fear that this system may induce a professor to treat his own pupils in too lenient a way, and so lower the standard of the Doctor's degree. There was a time when such abuses used to occur, but there very soon arose such public indignation that the abuses ceased to occur. Even at the present day similar instances occasionally occur, but, as before remarked, the position of a professor depends in such a degree upon the value of the dissertations worked out under his supervision, that such deviations from the right way correct themselves in the course of time. The most effective instru- ment for that purpose is the publication of all dissertations and the consequent public control over them ; for this reason publication is, I believe, compulsorily prescribed in all German universities. " When the student has finished his course he is still entirely free to choose between a scientific and a technical career. This is a very important point in our educational system ; it is made possible by the circumstance that the occupation of a technical chemist in works is very often almost as scientific in its character as in a university laboratory. This is connected with a remarkable feature in the develop- ment of technical chemistry in Germany — the very point upon which the important position of chemical manufacture in this country depends. The organisation of the power of invention in manufactures and on GERMAN EDIK^VTTONAL METHOm. large scale is, as far as I know, unique in the world's history, and it is the very marrow of our splendid development. Each large works has the greater part of its scientific staff — and there are often more H^han 100 doctores phil. in a single manufactory — occupied, not in the management of the manufacture, but in making inventions. The research laboratory in such a work is only different from one in a university by its being more splendidly and sumptuously fitted than the latter. I have heard from the business managers of such works that they have not unfrequentl^ men who have worked for four years without practical success ; but if they know them to possess ability jjj they keep them notwithstanding, and in most cases with ultimate ^^fcuccess sufficient to pay the expenses of the former resultiess years. " It seems to me a point of the greatest importance that the conviction of the practical usefulness of a theoretical or purely scientific training is fully understood in Germany by the leaders of great manufactories. When, some years ago, I had occasion to preside at a meeting, consisting of about two-thirds practical men and one-third teachers, I was much surprised to observe the unhesitating belief of the former in the useful- ness of entirely theoretical investigations. And I know a case where, quite recently, an " extraordinary " professor of a university has been ■■offered a very large salary to induce him to enter a works, only for ' the purpose of undertaking researches regarding the practical use of some scientific methods which he had been working at with con- i^liderable success. No special instructions are given to him, for it is ' taken for granted that he himself will find the most promising methods ; only, in order to increase his interest in the business, part of his remunera- tion has been made proportional to the commercial success of his future inventions. From this clear understanding of the commercial importance of science by the directors of industrial establishments there science itself gains another advantage. A scientific man can be almost sure, if he wants in his investigations the help of such technical means as only great works can afford, that he will get such assistance at once on apphcation to any works, and the scientific papers of German chemists very often contain acknowledgments, with due thanks, of considerable help they have thus obtained. " Besides these advantiiges for the development of scientific and , technical chemistry in Germany there exists another very important {■factor — ^practical assistnnce from the Government. Universities are in Germany affairs of the State, not of the Empire, and in no other point has the division of the Fatherland into many smaller countries proved itself to such a degree a boon and a blessing. The essential 74 EDUdATiON AND l^AtlONAL PROGRfiSS. character of the German universities, the freedom conferred by the independence of the numerous universities, is never lost. There have been hard times occasionally for the universities of one country or another ; but some universities were always to be found where even in times of hard oppression liberty of teaching and learning remained complete and unaffected, and the spirit of pure unalloyed scientific research was preserved and encouraged. So this palladium of intel- lectual freedom has never been lost ; and it regained the former influence as soon as the casual oppression ceased. In our days, there is among all the separate State Governments in Germany a clear conviction of the importance of practical support being given to pure scientific research. To take one instance, in order to facilitate teaching and research in electro-chemistry (a recently developed branch of science) a suggestion by some leading practical scientific men to the members of the Government was sufficient. Upon such a suggestion a considerable sum of money was spent first by the Prussian Govern- ment for the endowment of electro-chemical chairs and laboratories in the three " polytechnic " colleges of that country. A short time afterwards it was resolved to erect at one of the universities (Gottingen) an institute for physical chemistry, and especially electro-chemistry, in the shape of a building which has just been completed. At the same time, other German countries have begun to grant to their universities and technical colleges considerable sums of money for similar purposes ; e.g., the Saxon Landtag alone has unanimously voted half a million marks (==£25,000) for the erection of a splendid laboratory for physical chemistry at Leipzig. "You will excuse my boasting about our German management of this most important question of scientific education. It is no blind admiration without criticism, for I know by practical experience the management in other countries, and I can compare them. And it is only for the sake of science itself that I write these fines. If they should help the spread of the conviction of the incomparable practical usefulness of every support given to pure science, together with the recognition of the fact that the latter can only grow in an atmosphere of liberty and confidence, I should regard it as tending towards the progress of science itself, and destined to exercise such an influence upon scientific progress as may be compared with the discovery of the most remarkable scientific fact."] A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUCTION.- (1898.) The two addresses by my colleagues Profs. Judd and Roberts-Austen have drawn attention to the general history of our College and the details of one part of our organisation. I propose to deal with another part, the consideration of which is of very great importance at the present time, for we are in one of those educational move- ments which spring up from time to time and mould the progress of civilisation. The question of a teaching University in the largest city in the world. Secondary Education and so-called Technical Education are now occupying men's minds. I^K At the beginning it is imperative that I should call l^your attention to the fact that the stern necessities of the human race have been the origin of all branches of science and learning ; that all so-called educational movements have been based upon the actual requirements of the time. There has never been an educational movement for learning's sake ; but of course there have always been studies and students apart from any of those general Lovements to which I am calling attention ; still we have An address delivered at the Royal College of Science on Oelober 6, 1898. tT education and national progress. ^^M to come down to the times of Louis Quatorze before the study of the useless, the meme inutile, was recognised as a matter of national concern. It is perhaps the more necessary to insist upon stern necessity as being the origin of learning, because it is so difficult for us now to put ourselves in the place of those early representatives of our race that had to face the pro- blems of life among conditionings of which they were pro- foundly ignorant ; when night meant death ; when there was no certainty that the sun would rise on the morrow ; when the growth of a plant from seed was unrecognised ; when a yearly return of seasons might as well be a miracle as a proof of a settled order of phenomena ; when, finally, neither cause nor effect had been traced in the operations of nature. It is doubtless in consequence of this difficulty that some of the early races have been credited by some authors with a special love of abstract science, of science for its own sake ; so that this, and not stern necessity, was the motive of their inquiries. Thus we have been told that the Chaldseans differed from the other early races in having a predilection for astronomy, another determining factor being that the vast plains in that country provided them with a perfect horizon. The first historic glimpses of the study of astronomy we find among the peoples occupying the Nile Valley and Chaldsea, say 6000 B.C. But this study had to do with the fixing of the length of the year, and the determination of those times in it in which the various agricultural operations had to be performed. These were related strictly to the rise of the Nile in one country and of the Euphrates in the other. All human HISTORY "OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUCTION. 77 ctivity was in fact tied up with the movements of the n, moon and stars. These, then, became the gods of those early peoples, and the astronomers, the seers, were Hfche first priests ; revered by the people because, as inter- ^^reters of the celestial powers, they were the custodians of the knowledge which was the most necessary for the purposes of life. Eudemus of Rhodes, one of the principal pupils of Aristotle, in his History of Geometry, attributes the origin of geometry to the Egyptians, " who were obliged to in- vent it in order to restore the landmarks which had been destroyed by the inundation of the Nile," and observes " that it is by no means strange that the invention of the sciences should have originated in practical needs. "•••' The new geometry was brought from Egypt to Greece by Thales three hundred jears before Aristotle was born. When to astronomy and geometry we add the elements of medicine and surgery, which it is known were familiar to the ancient Egyptians, it will be conceded that we are, in those early times, fiice to face with the cultivation of the most useful branches of science. Now, although the evidence is increasing day by day that Greek science was Egyptian in its origin, there is no doubt that its cultivation in Greece was more extended, and that it was largely developed there. One of the most useful and prolific writers on philosophy and science who has ever lived, Aristotle, was born in the fourth century B.C. From him, it may be said, dates a general conception of science based on observation as differing from experiment. If you wish to get an idea of the science of those times, read his writings on Physics and on the Classification of Animals. * " Greek Geometry^ from Thales to Euclid," p. 2. (AUman.) 78 EDUGATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. All sought in Aristotle the basis of knowledge, but they only read his philosophy ; Dante calls him " the Master of those who know. "'■'■* Why was Aristotle so careful to treat science as well as philosophy, with which his master, Plato, had dealt almost exclusively ? The answer to this question is of great interest to our present subject. The late Lord Playfairf in a pregnant passage, suggests the reason, and the later history of Europe shows, I think, that he is right. " We find that just as early nations became rich and prosperous, so did philosophy arise among them, and it declined with the decadence of material prosperity. In those splendid days of Greece, when Plato, Aristotle and Zeno were the representatives of great schools of thought which still exercise their influence on mankind, Greece was a great manufacturing and mercantile community ; Corinth was the seat of the manufacture of hardware ; Athens that of jewellery, shipbuilding and pottery. The rich men of Greece and all its free citizens were actively engaged in trade and commerce. The learned class were the sons of those citizens, and were in possession of their accumulated experience derived through industry and foreign relations. Thales was an oil merchant ; Aristotle inherited wealth from his father, who was a physician, but, spending it, is believed to have supported himself as a druggist till PhiUp appointed him tutor to Alexander. Plato's wealth was largely derived from commerce, and his master, Socrates, is said to have been a sculptor. 2eno, too, was a travelling merchant. Archi medes is perhaps an exception, for he is said to have been closely related to a prince ; but if so, he is the only princely discoverer of science on record." In ancient Greece we see the flood of the first great in- tellectual tide. Alas ! it never touched the shores of Western Europe, but it undoubtedly reached to Rome, and there must have been very much more observational science taught in the Roman studia than we generally * " Inferno," c. iv. 130 et seq. t " Subjects of Social Welfare," p. 206, HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUCTION. 79 imagine, otherwise how explain the vast public works, ■Bnd their civilising influence carried over sea and Band from Africa to Scotland ? In some directions ^ftheir applications of science are as yet unsur- ^^assed. With the fall of the Roman Empire both science and philosophy disappeared for a while. The first wave had come and gone ; its last feebler ripples seem to have been represented at this time by the gradual change of the Roman secular studia wherever they existed into clerical schools, the more important of which were in time attached to the chief cathedrals and monasteries ; and it is not difficult to understand why the secular (or scientific) in- struction was gradually replaced by one more fitted for the training of priests. It is not to be wondered at that the ceaseless strife in the centre of Europe had driven what little learning there was to the western and southern extremities where the turmoil was less — I refer to Britain and South Italy — while the exiled Nestorians carried Hellenic science and philosophy out of Europe altogether to Mesopotamia and Arabia. The next wave, it was but a small one, had its origin in our own country. In the eighth century England was at its greatest height, relatively, in educational matters ; chiefly owing to the labours of two men. Beda, generally called the Venerable Bede, the most eminent writer of his age, was born near Monkwearmouth in 673, and passed his life in the monastery there. He not only wrote the history of our island and nation, but treatises on the nature of things, astronomy, chronology, arithmetic, medicine, philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, poetry, music j 80 EDUCATION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. H basing his work on that of Pliny. He died in 735, in which year his great follower was born in Yorkshire. I refer to Alcuin. He was educated at the Cathedral School at York under Archbishop Egbert, and having imbibed everything he could learn from the writings of Bede and others, was soon recognised as one of the greatest scholars of the time. On returning from Rome, whither he had been sent by Eaubald to receive the pallium, he met Karl the Great, King of the Franks and Lombards, who eventually induced him to take up his residence at his Court, to become his instructor in the sciences. Karl (or Charlemagne) then was the greatest figure in the world, and although as King of the Franks and Lombards, and subsequently Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, his Court was generally at Aachen, he was constantly travelling throughout his dominions. He was induced, in consequence of Alcuin's influence, not only to have a school always about him on his journeys, but to establish, or foster, such schools wherever he went. Hence it has been affirmed that " France is indebted to Alcuin for all the polite learning it boasted of in that and the following ages." The Universities of Paris, Tours, Fulden, Soissons and others were not actually founded in his day, but the monastic and cathedral schools out of which they eventually sprung were strengthened, and indeed a considerable scheme of education for priests was established ; that is, an education free from all sciences and in which philosophy alone was considered. Karl the Great died in 814, and after his death the eastward travelling wave, thus started by Bede and Alcuin, slightly but very gradually increased in height. Two centuries later, however, the conditions were changed. mSTORY OF SCTENTTFTO INSTRUCTION. We find ourselves in presence of interference phenomena, for then there was a meeting with another wave travel- ling westwards, and this meeting was the origin of the European Universities. The wave now manifested travelling westerly, spread outward from Arab centres first and finally from Constantinople, when its vast stores of Greek lore were opened by the conquest of the city. The first wavelet justified Eudemus' generalisation that " the invention of the Sciences originated in practical needs," and that knowledge for its own sake was not the determining factor. The year had been determined, stone circles erected almost everywhere, and fires signalled from them, giving notice of the longest and shortest days, so that agriculture was provided for, even away from churches and the Festivals of the Church. The original user of geometry was not required away from the valleys of the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, and, there- fore, it is now Medicine and Surgery that come to the front for the alleviation of human ills. In the eleventh century we find Salerno, soon to be famed throughout Europe as the great Medical School, forming itself into the first University. And Medicine did not exhaust all the science taught, for Adelard listened there to a lecture on " the nature of things," the cause of magnetic attraction being one of the " things " in question. This teaching at Salerno preceded by many years the study of the law at Bologna and of theology at Paris. The full flood came from the disturbance of the Arab wave centre by the Crusades, about the beginning of the eleventh century. After the Pope had declared the " Holy War," William of Malmesbury tells us : " The most distant islands and savage countries were inspired with IDUGATION this ardent passion. The Welshman left his hunting, the Scotchman his fellowship with vermin, the Bane his drinking party, the Norwegian his raw fish." Report has it that in 1096 no less than 6,000,000 were in motion along many roads to Palestine. This, no doubt, is an exaggeration, but it reflects the excitement of the time, and prepare us for what happened when the Crusaders returned ; as Green puts it"' : — " The western nations, including our own, ' were quickened with a new life and throbbing with a new energy.' .... A new fervour of study sprang up in the West from its contact with the more cultured East. Travellers like Adelard, of Bath, brought back the first rudi- ments of physical and mathematical science from the schools of Cordova or Bagdad. . . . The long mental inactivity of feudal Europe broke up like ice before a summer's sun. Wandering teachers, such as Lanfranc or Anselm, crossed sea and land to spread the new power of knowledge. The same spirit of restlessness, of inquiry, of impatience with the older traditions of mankind, either local or intellectual, that drove half Christendom to the tomb of its Lord, crowded the roads with thousands of young scholars hurrying to the chosen seats where teachers were gathered together." Studium generate was the term first applied to a large educational centre where there was a guild of masters, and whither students flocked from all parts. At the beginning of the thirteenth century the three principal studia were Paris, Bologna and Salerno, where theology and artsj law and medicine, and medicine almost by it- self, were taught respectively ; these eventually developed into the first universities.! English scholars gathered in thousands at Paris round the chairs of William of Champeaux and Abelard, where they took their place as one of the " nations " of which the great Middle Age University of Paris was composed. * " History of the Englisli People," I. 198. t See " Histoire de I'Universitf^ He Paris." Cr^vier, 11^1, passim. mSTORY OF SCIENTTFTC ^^r8TRTTCTT0^^. 83 We have only to do with the Arts faculty of this Uni- versity. We find that the subject-matter of the liberal education of the Middle Ages, there dealt with, varied very little from that taught in the schools of ancient Rome. The so-called " artiens," students of the Arts faculty which was the glory of the University and the one most numerously attended, studied the seven arts of the tri- vium and quadrivium — that is, grammar, rhetoric, dia- lectic; and arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy. '••■ This at first looks well for scientific study, but the mathematics taught had much to do with magic ; arith- metic dealt with epacts, golden numbers and the like. There was no algebra and no mechanics. Astronomy dealt with the system of the seven heavens. Science, indeed, was the last thing to be considered in the theological and legal studia, and it would appear that it was kept alive more in the medical schools than in the Arts faculties. Aristotle's writings on physics, biology and astronomy were not known till about 1230, and then in the shape of Arab-Latin translations. Still it must not be forgotten that Dante learned some of his astronomy, at all events, at Paris. Oxford was an offshoot of Paris, and therefore a theo- logical studium, in all probability founded about 1167,t and Cambridge came later. Not till the Reformation (sixteenth century) do we see any sign of a new educational wave, and then we find the two which have had the greatest influence upon the * Enumerated in the following Middle Age Latin verse : " Lingua, tropus, ratio, numenif*, tonus, an