SIR LYON PLAYFAIR'S ADDRESS.
THE introductory lecture of the President of the British
Association this year is not inspiriting reading. It is too like a charity sermon preached by a popular clergyman on behalf of Science. Sir Lyon Playfair was occasionally discursive, fre- quently amusing, and once or twice eloquent; but he always came back to the old complaint that the State did not spend enough money in diffusing scientific knowledge and fostering scientific research. " Cash, my brethren," he seemed to say, " cash is the ultimate source of light." Science develops the mind ; therefore, spend on it. Science makes nations rich ; there- fore, give it grants. Science makes people happy ; therefore, its promotion is a duty of the Treasury. Thought is greater than trade ; but the manure of thought is cash. So plaintive, indeed, did the President become, that in one passage, when he asked fora little grant for London, we were irresistibly—though, we admit, blameably—reminded of Mr. Montague Tigg and his ardour in pleading for Chevy Slyme, which brought him down at last "to the ridiculously small sum of eighteenpence." So incessant is this refrain, so urgent is Sir Lyon's petition, that he leaves at last the impression that in his belief none but the salaried or the rich can be thoroughly scientific ; and that scientific knowledge is a luxury which, like mangosteens in England, or ice in India, can only be provided by great expenditure. Indeed, he almost said this. " The pursuit of science," he said, " requires in a community a superfluity of wealth beyond the needs of ordinary life." The ancient savants, Thales, Plato, Zeno, Socrates, Thucy- dides, Aristotle—surely an odd list—were all independent or rich men ; and in modern times the need for external support is as great, for while a work of art will sell, a scientific thought will not. Poverty and thought in this department are incom- patible, and science cannot be cultivated sufficiently by voluntary effort. The State must help it, or indeed force it, or scientific inquiry will languish, and even the rich will not take to it. Even they, thinks Sir Lyon Playfair, determined to cover the whole ground, need help ; for " if our Universities and schools created that love of science which a broad education would surely inspire, our men of riches and leisure who advance the boundaries of scientific knowledge could not be counted on the fingers as they now are, when we think of Boyle, Cavendish, Napier, Lyell, Murchison, and Darwin, but would be as numerous as our statesmen and orators." Is it the rich who, under the " broader education " which, says the President, is fostered by such heavy grants in France and Spain, devote them- selves to science, or enlarge her boundaries, or give themselves up to far-reaching inquiry P We thought it was the poor, and that the physicists of Germany in particular, unless they applied their knowledge to some popular end, were among the poorest of the poor.
That, however, is a detail ; but this is not. Will Sir Lyon Playfair explain why this branch of thought needs help so much more than others,—than art, or literature, or pursuits like archaeology, or the study of the historic past P How does it happen that a branch of knowledge believed, and justly believed, by those who pursue it to be so entrancing and so fruitful, requires such a quantity of State assistance, and languishes so readily if deprived of Treasury grants P Literature maintains itself, art advances, non-scientific investigation finds devotees without being endowed; and how does it happen that the work of inquiry into Nature needs so much artificial sup- port P It is not dull, it is not exhausting, it is not refused its nailed of fame, it is not even unpopular,—for Sir Lyon Playfair says the people, who seldom elect authors and never elect artists, are beginning to send the men of science up to Parliament,—and why, then, should it want so many salaries ? Because, says Sir Lyon Playfair, you cannot sell a scientific thought. Surely the men of science sell their thoughts, when they are successful thoughts, as easily as the authors or the artists, and sometimes for much heavier prices. No writer and no artist has ever attained, even approximately, to such wealth as has rewarded the exertions of a few men of science, who, after years of inquiry, have applied their knowledge to some purpose useful to mankind. Are the electricians poor, or the chemists, or even the few original dis- coverers in medicine ? Of course, the abstract thinkers remain unrewarded with cash; but then, so they do in every other department of life. Or will Sir Lyon Playfair, when he next talks of the value of scientific education, just account for the fact that scientific education needs State fostering in this country P The English, of all people, need the aid of science most. They have unusual natural
gifts for acquiring scientific knowledge. They seek with a certain fury for the advantages which science can confer, and they have given to the basis of all science, mathematics, nearly the highest place in education. They have the means to educate their children in any method they prefer. If they expressed a wish, they could turn every King Edward's School in the kingdom into a Polytechnic, and plant a scientific college in every county ; yet they do nothing of the kind, but remain content with the old classical and mathematical training. Why P
Because, says Sir Lyon Playfair, the Government does .not give enough money for scientific teaching. But the Government is the people, is only too anxious to meet any popular demand, only too feeble in opposing one ; willing, if the people order, to be extravagant upon anything, from buying pictures to founding laboratories. Why, then, is not the people clamour- ing exactly as Sir Lyon Playfair is P May not the explanation be that there is in the great body of Englishmen an instinct which teaches them that Sir Lyon Playfair is partly wrong ; that the laboratory which he so praises is not, except for special minds, a good or sufficient school; and that scientific knowledge can be sought most beneficially by those who are chosen for it by the natural selecting force of an over-ruling bias. Their in- stinct may be an unenlightened one; but if so, then Sir Lyon is still in error, and it is not grants which are wanted, but the spread of a thought among the people which would either supersede all necessity for grants, or would make the obtaining grants a very easy matter. Sir Lyon Playfair could have helped that spread much more by an address, showing the educational value of a scientific training, than by all his eloquent begging or all his demonstrations of the cash-value of scientific knowledge. The English, with all their love of comfort and tendency to accumn- late, are not at heart materialists, are singularly inaccessible to bribes, and care very little when their children are concerned whether the invention of lucifers saves £26,000,000 a-year or not. They are very glad it does ; but when phosphorus is pre- sented to them as a subject of study, they ask whether a perfect knowledge of the qualities and potentialities latent in phos- phorus will make a boy a man ? " Natural science," says the President, "more and more resolves itself into the teaching of the laboratory." Then, if he wants laboratories to supple- ment schools, he must show that the teaching of the labora- tory is that which in the highest degree educates, not that it is the teaching which moat conduces to the production of wealth. After all, Englishmen, stolid as they are supposed to be, have consciences and imaginations, and are not moved to enthusiasm by the prospect that their children, if bred in laboratories, may hit upon some idea as prolific of wealth as the discovery of latent heat.
We need not say that we have no intention to depreciate either science or scientific training. Many branches of science ennoble the mind, most of them increase the material happiness of men, and there are minds to which patient investigation of Nature is the most effectual, perhaps even the highest, training. The thoughts which have made the world, however, are not thoughts about physics ; the greatest men of the world have not been savants ; and the claims which the devotees of science put forward to be the depositaries of the only profitable knowledge are as irritating as they are inexact. The man who can weigh a planet, or answer the molecular theory from his own observa- tion, is not therefore an educated man. And remembering what the history of thought has been, we cannot but deprecate that spirit of sordidness in which for some years past the claims of science have been pressed,—the desire for salaries which has been so conspicuous whenever Professors have descanted on the merits of research. We have not the slightest objection to scientific departments, and quite agree with Sir Lyon Playfair that if the State wants fishes it could learn how to get them better by inquiring of the fishes—who, at least, tell no lies—than of the fishermen, who often do ; but still the picture he draws of the United States' Government, with its dozen departments of inquiry into geology, palmon- tology, ichthyology, chemistry, and the rest, does not inspire us with enthusiasm. It is all very excellent, no doubt ; but it was all consistent with slavery. France may be handed over to Paul Berta, and its judges still take bribes. We shall horrify Sir Lyon Playfair by a doubt whether large wages make discoverers ; whether in science, as in an army, honourable poverty does not conduce to the highest efforts; and whether richly endowed schools will produce the most successful pro- fessors, even in the inferior domain of applied science. Wheat- stone was great and was paid ; but how much a year did Friar Bacon get, or did anybody ever pay that early expert in natural science who discovered fire ?
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