have become! But when ninety per cent has gone, he will be able to hold his head as high as the best; and the accomplishment of this percentage is not half so difficult now as the task encountered by the pioneers who first blazed a path in the wilderness of ignorance and superstition in which they found him in 1862. Educate the negro, and he becomes free indeed in "mind, body, and estate."

RELATIONS OF SCIENCE TO THE PUBLIC WEAL.*

ང·

BY SIR LYON PLAYFAIR, K. C. B., M. P., F. B. S.

PART FIRST.

VISIT TO CANADA.-LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: Our last meeting at Montreal was a notable event in the life of the British Association, and even marked a distinct epoch in the history of civilization. It was by no mere accident that the constitution of the Association enabled it to embrace all parts of the British Empire. Science is truly catholic, and is bounded only by the universe. In relation to our vast empire, science as well as literature and art are the common possession of all its varying people. The United Kingdom is limited to 120,800 square miles, inhabited by thirty-five million people; but the empire as a whole has eight and one half million square miles, with a population of three hundred and five millions. To federate such vast possessions and so teeming a population into a political unit is a work only to be accomplished by the labors and persistent efforts of perhaps several generations of statesmen. The federation of its science is a subject of less dimensions well within the range of experiment. No part of the British Empire was more suited than Canada to try whether her science could be federated with our science. Canada has lately federated distinct provinces, with conflicting interests arising from difference of races, nationalities, and religions. Political federation is not new in the history of the world, though it generally arises as a consequence of war. It was war that taught the Netherlands to federate in 1619. It was war which united the States in America; federated Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, and unified Italy. But Canada formed a great national life out of petty provincial existences in a time of profound peace. This evolution gave an immense impulse to her national resources. The Dominion still requires consolidation in its vast extent, and applied science is rapidly effecting it. Canada, with its great expanse of territory, nearly as large as the United States, is being knit together by the iron bands of

* Inaugural address of the President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at the Aberdeen meeting, September 9, 1885.

railways from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Pacific Ocean, so that the fertile lands of Ontario, Manitoba, Columbia, and the Northwestern Territories will soon be available to the world. Still, practical science has much to accomplish. England and France, with only one fifth the fertile area of Canada, support eighty million people, while Canada has a population not exceeding five million.

A less far-seeing people than the Canadians might have invited the applied science which they so much require. But they knew that without science there are no applications. They no doubt felt with Emerson

"And what if Trade sow cities

Like shells along the shore,

And thatch with towns the prairie broad
With railways ironed o'er;

They are but sailing foam-bells

Along Thought's causing stream,

And take their shape and sun-color

From him that sends the dream."

So it was with a far-reaching foresight that the Canadian Government invited the British Association for the Advancement of Science to meet in Montreal. The inhabitants of Canada received us with open arms, and the science of the Dominion and that of the United Kingdom were welded. We found in Canada, as we had every reason to expect, men of manly and self-reliant character, who loved not less than we did the old home from which they had come. Among them is the same healthiness of political and moral life, with the same love of truth which distinguishes the English people. Our great men are their great men; our Shakespeare, Milton, and Burns belong to them as much as to ourselves; our Newton, Dalton, Faraday, and Darwin are their men of science as much as they are ours. Thus a common possession and mutual sympathy made the meeting in Canada a successful effort to stimulate the progress of science, while it established, at the same time, the principle that all people of British origin—and I would fain include our cousins in the United States-possess a common interest in the intellectual glories of their race, and ought, in science at least, to constitute part and parcel of a common empire, whose heart may beat in the small islands of the Northern seas, but whose blood circulates in all her limbs, carrying warmth to them, and bringing back vigor to us. Nothing can be more cheering to our association than to know that many of the young communities of English-speaking people all over the globe-in India, China, Japan, the Straits, Ceylon, Australia, New Zealand, the Cape-have founded scientific societies in order to promote the growth of scientific research. No doubt science, which is only a form of truth, is one in all lands, but still its unity of purpose and fulfillment received an important practical expression by our visit to Canada. This community of sci

ence will be continued by the fact that we have invited Sir William Dawson, of Montreal, to be our next president at Birmingham.

II. SCIENCE AND THE STATE.—I can not address you in Aberdeen without recollecting that when we last met in this city our president was a great prince. The just verdict of time is that, high as was his royal rank, he has a far nobler claim to our regard as a lover of humanity in its widest sense, and especially as a lover of those arts and sciences which do so much to adorn it. On September 14, 1859, I sat on this platform and listened to the eloquent address and wise counsel of the Prince Consort. At one time a member of his household, it was my privilege to co-operate with this illustrious prince in many questions relating to the advancement of science. I naturally, therefore, turn to his presidential address to see whether I might not now continue those counsels which he then gave with all the breadth and comprehensiveness of his masterly speeches. I found, as I expected, a text for my own discourse in some pregnant remarks which he made upon the relation of science to the state. They are as follows: "We may be justified in hoping . . . that the Legislature and the state will more and more recognize the claims of science to their attention; so that it may no longer require the begging-box, but speak to the state like a favored child to its parent, sure of his paternal solicitude for its welfare; that the state will recognize in science one of its elements of strength and prosperity, to foster which the clearest dictates of selfinterest demand."

...

This opinion, in its broadest sense, means that the relations of science to the state should be made more intimate because the advance of science is needful to the public weal.

The importance of promoting science as a duty of statecraft was well enough known to the ancients, especially to the Greeks and Arabs, but it ceased to be recognized in the dark ages, and was lost to sight during the revival of letters in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Germany and France, which are now in such active competition in promoting science, have only publicly acknowledged its national importance in recent times. Even in the last century, though France had its Lavoisier and Germany its Leibnitz, their Governments did not know the value of science. When the former was condemned to death in the Reign of Terror, a petition was presented to the rulers that his life might be spared for a few weeks, in order that he might complete some important experiments, but the reply was, "The republic has no need of savants." Earlier in the century the muchpraised Frederick William of Prussia shouted with a loud voice, during a graduation ceremony in the University of Frankfort, "An ounce of mother-wit is worth a ton of university wisdom!" Both France and Germany are now ashamed of these utterances of their rulers, and 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 publications, like the great paleontological work embodying the researches 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 gave the co-operation of the navy, and provided 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 Holl, Massachusetts, or at Washington. The different universities send their best naturalists to aid in these investigations, which are under the direction of Mr. Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution. The annual cost of the Federal Commission is about forty thousand pounds, while the separate States spend about twenty thousand pounds in local efforts. The practical results flowing from these scientific investigations 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 beginning to be affected by the knowledge thus acquired, and a sensible result is already produced upon the most important of its fisheries. The United Kingdom largely depends upon its fisheries, but as yet our Government have scarcely realized the value of such scientific investigations as those pursued with success by the United States. Less systematically, but with great benefit to science, our own Government has used the surveying expeditions, and sometimes has equipped special expeditions to promote natural history and solar physics. Some of the latter, like the voyage of the Challenger, have added largely to the store of knowledge; while the former, though not primarily intended for scientific research, have had an indirect result of infinite value by becoming training-schools for such investigators as Edward Forbes, Darwin, Hooker, Huxley, Wyville Thomson, and others.

In the United Kingdom we are just beginning to understand the wisdom of Washington's farewell address to his countrymen, when he said: "Promote as an object of primary importance institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." It was only in 1870 that our Parliament established a system of national primary education. Secondary education is chaotic, and remains unconnected with the state, while the higher education of the universities is only brought at distant intervals under the view of the state. All great countries except England have Ministers of Education, but this country has only ministers who are the managers of primary schools. We are inferior even to smaller countries in the absence of organized state supervision of education. Greece, Portugal, Egypt, and Japan have distinct Ministers of Education, and so also among our colonies have Victoria and New Zealand. Gradually England is gathering materials for the establishment of an efficient education minister. The Department of Science and Art is doing excellent work in diffusing a taste for elementary science among the working-classes. There are now about seventyeight thousand persons who annually come under the influence of its science classes, while a small number of about two hundred, many of them teachers, receive thorough instruction in science at the excellent school in South Kensington, of which Professor Huxley is the dean. I do not dwell on the work of this Government department, because my object is chiefly to point out how it is that science lags in its progress in the United Kingdom owing to the deficient interest taken in it by the middle and upper classes. The working-classes are being roused from their indifference. They show this by their selection of scientific men as candidates at the next election. Among these are Professors Stuart, Roscoe, Maskelyne, and Rücker. It has its significance that such a humble representative of science as myself received invitations from working-class constituencies in more than a dozen of the leading manufacturing towns. In the next Parliament I do not doubt that a Minister of Education will be created as a nucleus round which the various educational materials may crystallize in a definite form.

III. SCIENCE AND SECONDARY EDUCATION.-Various Royal Commissions have made inquiries and issued recommendations in regard to our public and endowed schools. The commissions of 1861, 1864, 1868, and 1873 have expressed the strongest disapproval of the condition of our schools, and, so far as science is concerned, their state is much the same as when the Duke of Devonshire's commission in 1873 reported in the following words: "Considering the increasing importance of science to the material interests of the country, we can not but regard its almost total exclusion from the training of the upper and middle classes as little less than a national misfortune." No doubt