The President dwelt in the most attractive passage of his
address on the importance of research. "It was a King of France, Louis XIV., who first commended the study of the meme inutile. Years ago we had Faraday apparently wasting his energies and time in playing with needles : electricity now fills the world. To-day men of science in all lands are study- ing the emanations of radium : no research could be more abstract, but who knows what advance in human thought may follow, or what gigantic, world-transforming superstructure may eventually be raised on the minute foundations they are laying." In conclusion, he pleaded for the establishment of a Scientific National Council,—an advisory board to aid the State in facing the new problems that were constantly arising. There is much that is timely and valuable in Sir Norman Lockyer's warnings and suggestions. But we cannot help thinking that he has allowed himself to be carried too far by his battleship metaphor, nor can we share his belief in the magic of endowment, as though the output of brain-power must vary directly with the amount of money expended on its cultivation. Sir Norman Lockyer has doubtless no desire to boycott the humanities, yet his scheme of higher education takes no account of them whatever. Brain-power with him seems to be exclusively confined to the product of the laboratory, and the example of Germany, which is held up to us as a model, would certainly indicate that the most efficient results, both material and scientific, are secured under a system which lays a broad foundation of liberal learning. Even so, the general concentration of the German mind in a scientific direction has not tended to heighten the ethical or literary standard of the nation.
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