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THE ROYAL SOCIETY

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FROM AN ENGRAVING BY W. HOLLAR

THE ROYAL SOCIETY

OR, SCIENCE IN THE STATE AND IN THE SCHOOLS

SIR WILLIAM HUGGINS, K.C.B., O.M.

D.C.L., LL.D., Sc.D.. F.R.S., ETC.

WITH TWENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS

METHUEN & CO.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

First Published in 1906

Q ... •>
H-l

TO THE

FELLOWS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

A TRIBUTE

OF
GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT

PREFACE

I YIELD to the suggestion that has been made to
me to print in book form selections from four of
my Presidential Addresses which treat of subjects
of general interest, — namely, what science, as represented
by the Royal Society, has done and is doing now for the
nation ; and the place that science should take in
education.

I do so in the hope that this tetralogy when separately
printed may promote, much more widely than it could
do if restricted to the publications of the Royal Society,
the objects which I set before me in these Addresses.
I desired to make better known the great work, hidden
indeed from public view, which at great cost to itself the
Royal Society, almost from its foundation to the present
time, has carried on with great benefit to the State, and
through it to the nation at large, outside and in addition
to the reading, discussion, and printing of papers of re-
search, which is its first duty as a Society for " the im-
proving of Natural Knowledge."

My Address at the Anniversary of 1904 was devoted
to giving as full a sketch as the time allowed of the

PREFACE

advisory relation in which the Society has stood to the
Government, and of some of the more important public
works and questions which in the past the Society has
initiated, supported, or given advice about in connection
with the State ; and at the same time to pointing out the
large number of responsible public duties which to-day
rest permanently upon it, through which the Society
makes its influence felt strongly for the good of the
nation.

Another object I had in view was to rouse attention
to one of the most important of the practical questions
of the day, if we are to fulfil our mission as a great nation,
the necessity of giving science its proper place in all
education. In the Address given in 1902, this subject
is considered mainly in respect of the supreme influence
of science on the industries of the nation ; while in the
latter part of the Address of last year the intrinsic intel-
lectual value of the teaching of science as a means of
enlarging the powers of the mind takes the first place,
together with its relative value in education as compared
with humanistic studies.

The first part of the Address of 1905 discusses the
profound influence which the discoveries of science, in
great part the work of the Fellows of the Royal Society,
have had upon the general life and thought of the world,
especially during the last fifty years.

The remaining Address, given in 1903, considers the
remarkable change in the position of the Royal Society

PREFACE

to scientific research which it has itself brought about
through the wonderful increase of natural knowledge, due
largely to the work of its Fellows. As the number
of workers in science increased, the successive differenti-
ation of phenomena which is at the root of all progress
became greater, and the inevitable specialisation of natural
knowledge into distinct branches rapidly advanced until
these specialised activities could no longer be confined
within a single Society. In this way there came about
the swarming off, as need arose, of special Societies re-
stricted to the study and promotion of a single branch of
science, and not like the Royal Society for the improving
in its widest sense of natural knowledge. The present and
future relationship of the Royal Society to these daughter
Societies, to which she has given birth, is considered as far
as the limitations of an Address permitted.

The paragraphs placed within brackets are taken from
the reports in the Times of my speeches at the Anniversary
Dinners. Though expressed in a lighter manner, they
seem sufficiently germane to accompany with advantage
the statements of the text where they are inserted.

My thanks are due to the Royal Society for permission
to have photographs taken specially for this book, of
the Rooms of the Society ; of two Pages of the Charter-
book; of the Telescope made by Newton, and of the
Mask of his face ; of the Mace ; and of contemporary
Portraits in oil of the Royal Founder, and of ten Fellows
of immortal fame in science.

PREFACE

For the early history of the Society I am indebted
mainly to the History of the Royal Society compiled by
Mr. C. R. Weld, a former Assistant Secretary, and published
in 1848.

W. H.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE ........ vii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY . . i

ADDRESS, 1902 — Supreme importance of Science to the Indus-
tries of the Country, which can be secured
only through making Science an essential
part of all Education . . . 19

„ 1903 — The Relation of the Royal Society to the

specialised scientific Societies . . 38

„ 1904 — The Advisory Relation of the Royal Society

to the State, and the responsible public
duties which rest permanently upon the
Society . . . . .61

,, 1905 — The profound Influence which Science, repre-

sented by the Royal Society, has had upon
the Life and Thought of the World ; and
the Place of Science in General Education . 91

Science in Education .... 109

APPENDIX

LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE UNIVERSITIES ON SCIENCE IN EDU-
CATION ........ 119

STATEMENT ON SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION BY A COMMITTEE OF THE

ROYAL SOCIETY . ... 120

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

LIST OF PRESIDENTS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY \ . . 122

MEDALS AWARDED BY THE ROYAL SOCIETY . . . 124

THE LIBRARY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY .... 125

HISTORICAL INSTRUMENTS AND RELICS 128

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

On the Cover . . THE ARMS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY. (See p. 8.)

[From the Reverse of the Copley Medal.]

Frontispiece . . From an Engraving by Hollar, which forms the
Frontispiece to the large-paper edition of Spratt's
History of the Royal Society published in 1667.
The design, furnished by Evelyn, contains two
principal figures ; the first President of the
Society, Lord Brouncker, is on one side of the
bust of the Royal Founder, and on the other
is Francis Bacon, with the title of Artium
Instaurator.

On the Title-page

A Medallion of Roger Bacon (1214-1294). Copy
of an engraving on copper, made under the super-
intendence of Charles Babbage directly from the
medal itself, by an improved form of machine
invented by Mr. John Bate. The Medal forms
one of a series of eminent men struck at the
Royal Mint of Munich.

PLATES
PLATE I. OLD GRESHAM COLLEGE

Facing page
2

II. MEETING-ROOM OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY IN BUR-
LINGTON HOUSE (since 1873)

[Over the President's chair hangs the Portrait of
Sir Isaac Newton by Vanderbank.]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Facing page

PLATE III. THE PRINCIPAL LIBRARY, BURLINGTON HOUSE . 6

[On the table is seen the Air-pump with double
barrel, constructed and presented to the
Society in 1662 by the Hon. Robert Boyle,
and Dr. Priestley's Electrical Machine.
For an account of the Library, see Appendix,
p. 125.]

„ IV. PHOTOGRAPH OF AN EARLY PAGE OF THE CHARTER

BOOK . * . . . .8

V. PHOTOGRAPH OF A PAGE (1838) OF THE CHARTER

BOOK . . . . . .10

„ VI. THE MACE OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY (1663) . 12

[For history and description of Mace, see p. 17.]

,, VII. PHOTOGRAPH OF THE MASK OF THE FACE OF SIR

ISAAC NEWTON . . . . -14

[From a cast taken after death by Roubillac.]

„ VIII. ORIGINAL REFLECTING TELESCOPE OF SIR ISAAC

NEWTON . . . . . .16

[Made with his own hands in 1671. The Tele-
scope is standing on the bound original
Manuscript of the Principia, see p. II.]

„ IX. SIR THOMAS GRESHAM (1519-1579) . . 24

[Engraving by H. Robinson, after oil painting
by Holbein, in the Hall of the Mercers'
Company.]

X. FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626) . . .30

[Engraving by W. H. Worthington, after P.
Vansomer.]

,, XI. CHARLES n. (1630-1685), Founder . . -36

[Sir P. Lely.]

„ XII. WILLIAM HARVEY (1578-1657) . . -44

[De Reyn.]

„ XIII. HON. ROBERT BOYLE (1627-1691), F.R.S. . . 50

,, XIV. SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN (1632-1723), P.R.S. . 58

[Sir P. Lely, Sir G. Kneller (?).]

XV. JOHN EVELYN (1620-1706), Sec. R.S. . . 66

[Kerseboom.]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Facing page

PLATE XVI. SIR ISAAC NEWTOX (1642-1727), P.R.S. . . 72

[J. Vanderbank.]

„ XVII. SIR HANS SLOANE (1660-1752), P.R.S. . . 80

[Sir G. Kneller.]

,, XVIII. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790), F.R.S. . 88

XIX. JOHN DALTON (1766-1844), F.R.S. . . 94

[B. R. Faulkner.]

XX. THOMAS YOUNG (1773-1820), F.R.S. . . 100

[H. P. Briggs, R.A., after Sir T. Lawrence.]

XXL SIR HUMPHRY DAVY (1778-1829), P.R.S. . 106

[Sir T. Lawrence.]

XXII. MICHAEL FARADAY (1791-1867), F.R.S. . .114

[A. Blaikley.]

The six Initial designs drawn by Lady Huggins have been in each
case'suggested by a leading idea in the Addresses which they severally
introduce.

The Initial design at the beginning of the Fourth Address consists
of a Sketch Map of part of London c. 1600, showing the Globe
Theatre of Shakespeare, which, built in 1594, was burnt down in 1613.
The Map is based upon the following authorities : —

1. London, 1543. A. van den Wyngrerde.

2. ,, 1560-1570. Ralph Agas.

3. „ 1593- P- Vanden Keere, in Speculum Britannia, by^John

Norden.

4. „ 1604. A. Ryther (Chronicles of London. C. L. Kingsford.)

5. „ 1610. J. Hondius (?) in J. Speed's Theatre of G. Britaine and

Ireland.

6. ,, 1616. N. Visscher.

7. „ 1647. W. Hollar.

8. „ 1658. W. Faithorne.

9. ,, Stow's Survey, ist Edition ; and History of English Dramatic

Poetry and Annals of the Stage, by J. P. Collier.

The Bear-baiting House is shown in its earlier form, though by 1600
it had probably been rebuilt in close resemblance to the Globe Theatre,
and provided with a movable stage, so that occasionally plays could
be acted in it.

EARLY HISTORY OF
THE ROYAL SOCIETY

THE his-
t o r y,
and the

great work, past
and present, of
the Royal Soc-
iety form the
chief burden of
the Addresses
for 1903 and 1904.
Sufficient infor-
mation will be
found there,
it is believed,
to furnish the
reader with a
not altogether
inadequate c o n-
ception of the circumstances of the foundation, two and

a half centuries ago, of the subsequent progress, and of
A

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

the present very high position, of this great Society
for the advancement of natural knowledge. Still, it may
not be undesirable to supplement what has been said by
a few details of the Society's early history.

The Royal Society arose out of a small club, formed
about 1645, of " divers worthy persons, inquisitive into
natural philosophy, and particularly of what was called
the New Philosophy, or Experimental Philosophy," which
met weekly in London for the discussion of " Philosophical
Inquiries."

One of the distinguished members of the club was John
Evelyn, who by his numerous scientific writings and his
personal example exercised a powerful influence over the
men of his time. The best known of his works to-day are
his Diary, and Sylva, an elaborate treatise on arbori-
culture. A small work of his, little known at present,
called Fumifugium, published in 1661, deals with the
smoke and vitiation of the air of London, which had con-
tinuously increased since the introduction of sea-coal in
the reign of Edward I. Evelyn says that the " hellish
and dismal cloud of sea-coal " in his time had become
so great as to make " the City of London resemble the
suburbs of Hell." The sun was darkened, and travellers
approaching London could smell the smoke at a distance
of many miles.

He considered the smoke to be due chiefly to the
chimneys of factories, and suggests as a main remedy for
the state of things that all trade works evolving smoke

,'.

should, by Act of Parliament, be banished to a distance
of five or six miles from London. For an improvement
of the air, Evelyn suggests large plantings of aromatic
trees and plants.

Evelyn quotes aptly in support of the injurious influ-
ence of smoke the words of Lucretius—

" Carbonumque gravis vis, atque odor insinuatur
Quam facilis in cerebrum."

In another subject of civic hygiene Evelyn showed
himself to be ahead of his time, by his contention that
intramural burials should be prohibited by Act of Parlia-
ment.

About 1648-1649 the club was divided; some of the
members, among whom was Dr. Wilkins, afterwards
Bishop of Chester, having removed to Oxford, formed
themselves into the Philosophical Society of Oxford, at
first meeting at Dr. Petty's lodgings in an apothecary's
shop, for the convenience of inspecting drugs, and then
at the rooms of Dr. Wilkins, warden of Wadham College.
Dr. Wilkins became afterwards, jointly with Henry Olden-
burg, one of the first Secretaries of the Royal Society ;
he was an inspirer of the younger men, and at that early
date saw in prophetic vision navigation by submarine
vessels, and travelling through the air by means of flying
machines.

The Oxford Society was a powerful auxiliary to the
newly founded Royal Society ; the two Societies com-
municating to each other the principal papers of their J)

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

respective Fellows. The Oxford Society held its meetings
until 1690, when it ceased to exist.

" The members in London continued to meet, usually
at Gresham College, with the exception of the year 1658,
when the place of their meeting was made a quarter for
soldiers. In 1660 the meetings were revived, and at the
meeting on 28th November of that year, among other
subjects was discussed the founding of a college for the
promoting of " Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learn-
ing." Rules of procedure were drawn up, and a list of forty-
one persons was made, who were known to those present,
and were judged willing to join the new Society.

At a subsequent meeting on the 5th of December, the
new Society was formed by a declaration signed by the
forty-one persons named at the former meeting, together
with seventy-three others, binding themselves to meet
weekly when not unavoidably hindered, and to contribute
one shilling weekly towards defraying necessary charges.

On the igth December it was decided that the meetings
should be held weekly at Gresham College ; and on the
6th of March following, Sir Robert Moray, one of the Privy
Council and of great influence with the King, was chosen
President.

It would appear that, some time previously to the
i6th October 1661, the Society had petitioned His Majesty
to incorporate them, for on that day " Sir Robert Moray
acquainted the Society that hee and Sir Paul Neile kiss'd the

King's hands in the Company's Name," and is " intreated

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

by them to return most humble thanks to His Majesty
for the Reference he was pleased to grant of their Petition ;
and to this favour and honour hee was pleased to offer of
him selfe to bee enter'd one of the Society."

In the Epistle Dedicatory to the King, at the beginning
of his History of the Royal Society (1667), Spratt says of
the founding and patronage of the Society by Charles n. :
" An enterprise equal to the most renouned actions of the
best Princes. For, to increase the powers of mankind, and
to free them from the bondage of errors, is a greater glory
than to enlarge empire, or to put chains on the necks of
conquered nations."

The Charter of Incorporation passed the Great Seal
on the I5th July 1662, which is therefore the date, by the
elevation of the club " meeting weekly to consult and
debate concerning the promoting of experimental learning "
into the Royal Society, of its formal foundation. On the
2Qth of August the first President, Lord Brouncker, the
Council and the Fellows went to Whitehall to return their
thanks to His Majesty.

On the 22nd of April of the following year, a second
Charter granting further privileges passed the Great Seal.i
In 1669 a third Charter was given, but this does little more
than make a grant to the Society of lands in Chelsea
(Chelsea College), but continuing the powers given by the
second Charter with some slight changes. It is the second"
Charter which practically ensures the Society its privileges, I

and by which the Society has since been governed. The

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

Second Charter provides for a Council of twenty-one, of
whom ten are to be changed each year on St. Andrew's
day. The election of the Council, including the President,
the Treasurer, and the two Secretaries, is placed in the
hands of the Fellows, as is also the election of new Fellows.
Otherwise, the government of the Society, including the
making of laws, statutes, and ordinances, and the trans-
action of all matters relating to the management of the
Society and its affairs, is entrusted to the President and
Council alone, the Fellows having no direct voice in these
matters.

With some interruptions in 1665, on account of the
Plague, and later on account of the Great Fire of London,
the meetings continued to be held at Gresham College.

Gresham College, formerly the mansion-house of Sir
Thomas Gresham, situated in Bishopsgate Street and
extending back to Broad Street, was not only the cradle
of the Royal Society, but its home until 1710.

Sir Thomas Gresham was a merchant of great distinc-
tion, the adviser of the Government in financial matters,
and frequently employed in diplomatic missions ; the
Founder of the Royal Exchange and of Gresham College.

The representation of the College on Plate I. is repro-
duced from a drawing copied from an engraving in Ward's
Lives of the Gresham Professors, which appears in Weld's
History of the Royal Society.

A pamphlet in the British Museum, entitled Account of

the Proceedings of the Council of the Royal Society, in order

to remove from Gresham College, gives a precise description
of the commodious rooms occupied by the Society in
Gresham College. " The great hall, to which the ascent
from the court is by a few steps, is 37 feet long, near 20
feet broad, and 25 or 30 feet high. This spacious room
is a noble entrance to the rest of the apartments of the
Royal Society. The next room is about 35 feet long, near
20 feet broad, and 13 feet high ; and in this the Society
always met upon St. Andrew's day for their anniversary
elections. The inner room for their ordinary weekly
meetings is about 22 feet long and 18 feet broad. These
three rooms are all upon the same floor ; from the last,
two or three steps convey you into the gallery, which is
140 feet long and 131-2 broad. Beyond is the Repository
of their curiosities, which with the two rooms adjoining
is about 90 feet long and 12 or 13 feet broad. Besides
these rooms within, they have the use of a fair colonnade
under the gallery and of a spacious area about 140 feet
long and 197 feet broad."

In 17.10, under the Presidency of Sir Isaac Newton,
the Society acquired, by purchase, with borrowed money,
a house of its own in Crane Court, Fleet Street. On the
Society taking up its abode there, the President ordered
the porter to be clothed in a suitable gown, and provided
with a staff surmounted by the Arms of the Society in
silver ; and on meeting nights a lamp to be hung over
the entrance of the court from Fleet Street. After a time

the porter ceased to wear a gown, but early in the last

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

century the Council resolved that the porter should be
furnished with a livery, which he still wears.

Here the Society continued to meet, until in 1780 rooms
in Somerset House were placed at their disposal by the
Government. In 1857, the apartments at Somerset House
being required for Government offices, the Society was
temporally accommodated in that part of Burlington
House which is now occupied by the Royal Academy of
Arts. When the new wings and the gateway were added
to Burlington House in 1873, the Society took up the
permanent residence which it now occupies in the east
wing. (Plates II. and III.)

The Armorial Bearings granted by the Royal Founder
are described in the second Charter in the following words :
' These following blazons of honour, that is to say, in the
dexter corner of a silver shield our three Lions of England,
and for Crest a helm adorned with a crown studded with
florets, surmounted by an eagle of proper colour holding
in one foot a shield charged with our lions : Supporters,
two white hounds gorged with crowns; to be borne, ex-
hibited, and possessed for ever (Translation.)

The apt Horatian motto, Nullius in verba, was selected
from several mottoes suggested by Evelyn. Among the
others were, Et augebitur Scientia, Omnia probate, and
Rerum cognoscere causas. Evelyn himself would have
preferred Omnia explorate, meliora retinete.

The Charter-Book was opened in 1664-1665. It is
bound in crimson velvet with gold clasps and corners,

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EARLY PAGE OF THE CHARTER-BOOK

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

having on one side a gold plate bearing the shield of the
Society, and on the other a corresponding plate showing
the crest — an eagle holding a shield with the arms of
England. The leaves of the book are of the finest vellum.
After copies of the second and third Charters, the first
page of the autograph portion contains the signatures of
Charles R., Founder ; James, Fellow ; and George Rupert,
Fellow.

Prince Rupert, a nephew of Charles I., a dashing soldier
and cavalry leader in the Civil War, was also distinguished
for his interest in science, and for his service to Art by the
introduction into England, where afterwards it so greatly
flourished, of mezzotint engraving, learned directly from
the inventor of the process, L. von Siegen. Prince Rupert
furnished Evelyn with a plate of the head of the executioner,
from his splendid mezzotint engraving, of " the Executioner
of St. John the Baptist " after Spagnoletto, to form an
illustration to Evelyn's chapter on the new process in his
monograph on the processes of engraving, Sculptura,
published in 1662. Evelyn had received practical in-
struction in mezzotinting from Prince Rupert, whom he
appears to regard as the inventor of the process ; he says
he is preparing a full statement for the Archives of the
Royal Society, where it is still preserved.

On the following page of the Charter Book, reproduced
on Plate IV., beneath the Obligation which heads each
leaf, are the signatures of many of the original Fellows.

After that of Lord Brouncker, the first President, follow

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

the autographs of Hooke, Boyle, Evelyn, Wilkins, Wren,
and many others.

Plate V. represents a page of the Charter Book in the
year of Queen Victoria's coronation, 1838. Within an
illuminated border, specially prepared for Her signature,
Queen Victoria has signed her name as Patron of the
Society. Below are the autographs of Prince Albert, of
Frederic William, King of Prussia, Frederick Augustus,
King of Saxony, the Emperor of Brazil, King Edward VII.
when Prince of Wales, and Alfred Duke of Connaught.

In 1671, Sir Isaac Newton, who afterwards held the
office of President for the long period of twenty-four years
(1705-1727), submitted to the Society an original reflecting
telescope made with his own hands. (Plate VIII.)

This telescope appears to have been the first reflecting
telescope actually constructed and directed to the heavens.
Some six or seven years previously, Mr. James Gregory, in a
book entitled Optica Promota, published in London in 1663,
explained the theory of the kind of relecting telescope
which still bears his name. As Gregory, according to his
own statement, possessed no mechanical dexterity, he
employed Messrs. Rives & Cox to grind a concave speculum
of six feet radius, and also a small one. These were never
finished, and even the tube of the telescope was not made.

Newton, having found that the angle of reflection for
rays of all colours was equal to their angle of incidence,
at once understood that by reflection the glaring imper-
fections of lenses due to the different refrangibilities of the

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PAGK (1838) OF THE CHARTKK-HOOK

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

different rays could be avoided, and a telescope of great
perfection constructed, provided a substance could be
found which would polish finely, and reflect a large part
of the light falling upon it ; and further, that the art of
communicating to it a parabolic figure could be attained.
It may be mentioned that concave mirrors of polished
metal had been in use very early for the magnification of
near objects, probably long before Giovanni Rucellai's
work on bees by this method in 1524. (" Gli Api, Roma,

This telescope, made by Newton with his own hands,
is nine inches long, two inches in aperture, and is stated
by Newton to magnify about thirty-eight times.

In the form of reflecting telescope suggested by Gregory,
the light, after having been reflected from the large concave
mirror, is received soon after coming to a focus, upon a
small concave mirror which sends it back through a hole
in the centre of the large mirror, where the image formed
is observed by means of a suitable eye-piece. In Newton's
construction the light from the large concave mirror,
before coming to a focus, is reflected to one side by a
small plane mirror placed at an angle of 45 degrees, and
passes through a hole in the side of the tube where the
image is viewed. A third form of reflecting telescope was
afterwards constructed by Cassegrain, in which Gregory's
small concave mirror is replaced by one of convex form ;
as this can be placed a little within the focal distance of
the large mirror, the length of the telescope is shortened

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

by twice the focal length of the small mirror. As, how-
ever, the image is inverted, the Cassegrain form is not
suitable for viewing terrestrial objects.

It may be mentioned here that in 1785 the President,
Sir Joseph Banks, at the request of Sir William Herschel,
and with the sanction of the Council, laid before George in.
that astronomer's scheme for constructing a reflecting
telescope on Newton's plan, of the colossal dimensions
of forty feet in length and four feet aperture. The King
approved the project, and promised to defray the cost
of constructing the instrument. The telescope was satis-
factorily completed, and erected at Slough in 1789, at
a cost of £4000.

The first anniversary dinner of the Society took place
on the 3oth November 1663. Evelyn, in his Diary, under
the above date, says : "It being St. Andrew's day,
who was our Patron, each Fellow wore a St. Andrew's
cross of ribbon on the crown of his hat. After the election
we dined together, His Majesty sending us venison (two
does)."

In his Diary , Pepys writes : " I had his cross on my
hat, as the rest had, which cost me 2s."

This early custom of the Fellows wearing a St.
Andrew's cross of ribbon at the Anniversary Meeting, as
well as the practice of the President of keeping on his
hat in the chair, except when addressing the Fellows,
and his wearing the large cornelian ring, bearing the

Arms of the Society, bequeathed by Martin Folkes for

the perpetual use of the President, have been long things
of the past.

It is obvious from this short sketch of the early history
of the Royal Society, that it was not intended as an academy
for all branches of learning, but as an Association for the
promotion of what was then known as the New Philosophy,
—the Improving of Natural Knowledge through a direct
questioning of nature herself by means of experiment.
This is clearly shown by the fuller title of the Society,
given in the words of the Royal Warrant, ordering a
Mace to be made for the Royal Society, of the date of
23rd May 1663.

" A Warrant to prepare and deliver to the Rt. Hon.
William Lord Viscount Brouncker, President of the Royal
Society of London, for improving of natural knowledge
by experiment, one gilt Mace of one hundred and fifty
oz. (troy weight), being a gift from His Majesty to the
said Society."

An important feature of the early meetings of the
Society was the performing of experiments before the
members, each experiment being made for and by
itself, and not as now, in illustration of a paper com-
municated to the Society. The importance in which
these experiments were held is shown by the Society
availing itself of the power granted by the Charter of
" appointing two or more curators of experiments." The
first curator was Robert Hooke, to whom, as joint curator,
was elected Dr. Denis Papin in 1684. Papin is chiefly

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

known in connection with the digester which bears his
name, and as a necessary adjunct to which, he invented
the safety valve. Papin gave a supper, prepared by his
digester, to some Fellows of the Society. Evelyn, who
was present, says in his Diary : ' The hardest bones of
beef and mutton were made as soft as cheese, ... a
jelly made of the bones of beef the most delicious I have
ever tasted; . . . this philosophical supper caused much
mirth amongst us, and exceedingly pleased all the com-
pany. ... I sent a glass of the jelly to my wife, to the
reproach of all that the ladies ever made of the best harts-
horn."

Papin observed that the boiling point of water becomes
higher when under pressure from its own steam ; and in
1687 he proposed to use steam as a moving power for
draining mines, and later for propelling boats. His plan
consisted of a cylinder in which a piston is raised by the
expansion of the steam, and then is forced down by atmo-
spheric pressure in consequence of the vacuum produced
by the condensation of the steam. Papin was thus the
inventor of the earliest cylinder and piston steam-engine,
which afterwards took practical shape in the atmospheric
engine of Newcomen.

The general scope of the early work of the Society is
manifest from the Committees appointed in 1664 to take
charge of some special branches of Natural Knowledge.

I. Mechanical. (69 names.)

II. Astronomical and Optical. (15.)

MASK OF THE FACE OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

•III. Anatomical. (All the Physicians of the Society.)
IV. Chymical. (The Physicians and 7 other names.)
V. Georgical. (Agriculture.) (32 names.)
VI. For Histories of Trades. (35 names.)
VII. For collecting all the Phenomena of Nature hitherto
observed and recorded, and all experiments made
and recorded. (21 names.)
VIII. For Correspondence.

Since 1847 the number of Fellows to be elected each
year is restricted to fifteen, which is slightly in excess of
the yearly average of deaths. The Council may once in
two years recommend to the Society for election, not more
than two persons who have rendered conspicuous service
to science, or whose election might be of signal benefit to
the Society.

A British Prince of the Blood Royal is eligible for
immediate election.

H.M. the King, who as Prince of Wales was elected a
Fellow in 1863, was pleased on his accession to become the
Patron of the Society, in succession to our late revered
Sovereign and Patron, Queen Victoria.

H.R.H. the Prince of Wales was elected a Fellow in
1893, and was pleased to attend an ordinary meeting of
the Society on 6th February 1902, for the purpose of
being formally admitted into the Society. The late Marquis
of Salisbury, a Fellow of the Society, then Prime Minister,
introduced His Royal Highness, who, after having sub-
scribed the Obligation of the Charter Book, was formally

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

admitted by the President in accordance with the Statutes,
the President taking him by the hand and saying : " I do,
by the authority and in the name of the Royal Society of
London, for improving natural knowledge, admit you a
Fellow thereof."

There are elected from time to time, as Foreign Members,
men of great eminence for their scientific discoveries and
attainments, of which the number is not to exceed fifty.

j^The total number of the Fellows is at present 454
(January 1906).

The President is elected annually, but the Statutes
contain no limitation of the number of years during which
the President remains eligible for re-election. Sir Joseph
Banks presided over the Society for forty-one years, Sir
Isaac Newton for twenty-four, and Sir Hans Sloane
f for fourteen years. About thirty years ago the Council
/ considered that it would be for the interests of the
Society that a change in the Presidency should take
\ place at intervals not greater than five years. Since
^that time an unwritten understanding exists, that a
President will not consent to be put again in nomination
after having served five years, thus practically limiting
the tenure of the office to five years.

The Mace, which was made for the Society in accordance
with the Royal Warrant quoted above, was received from
the Master of the Jewel House in August 1663. In the
first and second Charters, permission is given to the Society

to have two Sergeants-at-mace to attend upon the Presi-

fe;

ORIGINAL REFLECTING TELESCOPE OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON

dent : (duos servientes ad clavas, qui de tempore in tempus,
super President attendant}. The same practice exists at
the Royal Society as is observed in the House of Commons :
no meeting being legally held unless the Mace is placed
upon the table.

The Mace is made of silver, richly gilt, and weighs 190
oz. avoirdupois. It consists of a stem handsomely chased
with a running pattern of thistle leaves and flowers, this
plant having been chosen as the chief ornament on account
of its being symbolical of St. Andrew, the patron saint of
the Society. At the upper part it is terminated by an
urn-shaped head surmounted by a crown, orb, and cross.
On the head are embossed figures of a rose, harp, thistle,
and fleur-de-lys, emblematic of England, Ireland, Scotland,
and France, and on each side are the letters C.R. Under
the crown, and at the top of the head, the Royal Arms
appear, very richly chased; and at the other extremity
of the stem are two shields, the one bearing the Arms of
the Society, the other the following inscription : —

EX MUNIFICENTIA
AUGUSTISSIMI MONARCHY

CAROLI II.
DEI GRA. MAG. BRIT. FRANC. ET HIB.

REGIS, &C.

SOCIETATIS REGALIS AD SCIENTIAM

NATURALEM PROMOUENDAM INSTITUTE

FUNDATORIS ET PATRONI

AN. DNI 1663.
B I7

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

It is almost superfluous to state that there is no foun-
dation for the mistaken belief that this Mace is the identical
" bauble " turned out of the House of Commons by
Oliver Cromwell. Photographs of the Mace are given on
Plate VI.

THE SUPREME IMPORTANCE OF
SCIENCE TO THE INDUSTRIES OF
THE COUNTRY, WHICH CAN BE
SECURED ONLY THROUGH MAKING
SCIENCE AN ESSENTIAL PART OF
ALL EDUCATION.

"Be famous then

By wisdom ; as thy empire must extend,
So let extend thy mind o'er all the world
In knowledge," . . .

MILTON (Paradise Regained}.

From the Address delivered at the Anniversary Meeting
on December i, 1902.

S the liv-
ing re-
presen-
tatives of the
great men who
founded the
Royal Society,
or made it what
it is, it behoves
us to be very
eager as to what-
ever concerns

not only the
19

SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION

direct improving of natural knowledge, but also the
spread of that knowledge and its influence upon the
life and industry of the nation. If we contrast the
culture and civilisation of the great nations of antiquity,
great as they were, with the altogether fuller life of to-day,
we cannot fail to recognise how completely the untold
conveniences, comforts, activities possible in so many new
and varied directions, the wide dissemination by means of
scientific processes of forms of beauty, and the power over
disease of the present time, which have not only increased
the average span of life, but to a much greater extent
made so much more possible to man within his short span
of years, have followed directly from the great improve-
ment which has been brought about, especially during the
last century, and largely by the work of the Royal Society,
in our knowledge of natural processes and of the laws which
govern them.

An event, therefore, so closely associated with the
direct object for which the Royal Society exists, and of
so great significance and promise for a fuller recognition
in the future by the Government, of the importance of
scientific methods and of research to our industrial pro-
sperity, as the establishment of a National Physical
Laboratory, the opening of which has taken place since
our last Anniversary, should, it seems to me, receive on
this occasion more than a passing and mere formal notice,
especially as the ultimate control of the Institution is

vested in the Council of our Society.

SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION

The supreme value of research in pure science for the
success and progress of the national industries of a country
can no longer be regarded as a question open to debate, since
this principle has not only been accepted in theory, but
put in practice on a large scale, at a great original cost, in
a neighbouring country, with the most complete success.

The Physikalisch-technische Reichsanstalt of Berlin,
largely due to the scientific foresight of von Helmholtz,
was instituted in recognition of the principle that all the
industrial applications of science rest on the foundation
of pure scientific discovery. The Institute has for its
main objects — (i) The conduct of pure physical research,
especially in such directions as are suggested by industrial
questions ; (2) The construction and supply of electrical
and physical standards ; (3) The verification of instruments
of precision for scientific and technical purposes.

[This great Government Institution is now to be
supplemented by a corresponding Reichsanstalt for
Chemistry. Germany has long understood, what we are
only beginning to learn, that the industrial developments
of physics and of chemistry, on which to-day the welfare
and the progress of a country so largely depend, can be
adequately secured only by institutions receiving ample
national support. (1906.)]

The original cost of the Institute was over £200,000,
and its yearly maintenance is not less than £17,000. During
the five years that it has been at work its influence upon

the science and the manufacturing interests of Germany

SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION

has been most remarkable. Besides the publication of
numerous memoirs of original research and of papers on
technical processes, the direct results of the work of the
Institute upon the industries of the country have more
than justified the prevision of the founders ; largely, we
regret to say, to our own national loss, and to the almost
complete passing to that country of the renown which
was formerly ours in exact scientific measurements, and
for the construction of standards and instruments of
precision. So true is it, that the investment of public
money in scientific research can only be compared to good
seed cast into good ground, bringing forth in results a
hundred, or even a thousand-fold.

Besides these more direct results, the existence of such
a national Institution for physical and technical purposes
cannot fail to arouse and foster the public appreciation
of those scientific methods which, in education and in
commerce, as well as in the industries, are the all in all of
a nation's prosperity.

It is therefore with feelings of high satisfaction, shared,
I am sure, by all the Fellows, that I have to record the
opening in March last of a similar national Institution in
this country. As was fitting to a public occasion so full
of possibilities for the future wealth and power of the
country, the ceremony of inauguration was performed by
our Fellow, H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, who was accom-
panied by the Princess of Wales.

The Prince's words were weighty, and so appropriate

SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION

to this unique occasion in our country's history that I
place on record here a few sentences of special pertinence
and value. The Prince said : —

" I am glad that my first duty as a Fellow of the Royal
Society should be to join with my distinguished brethren
in opening this Institution, the direction and administration
of which have been entrusted to the Society by the Govern-
ment. It is also a great pleasure to assist in the inaugura-
tion of what may fairly be called a new departure, for I
believe that in the National Physical Laboratory we have
almost the first instance of the State taking part in scientific
research. The object of the scheme is, I understand, to
bring scientific knowledge to bear practically upon our
everyday industrial and commercial life, to break down
the barrier between theory and practice, to effect a union
between science and commerce. This afternoon's ceremony
is not merely a meeting of the representatives of an ancient
and world-renowned scientific Society for the purpose of
taking over a new theatre of investigation and research.
Is it not more than this ? Does it not show in a very
practical way that the nation is beginning to recognise
that if her commercial supremacy is to be maintained,
greater facilities must be given for furthering the applica-
tion of science to commerce and manufacture ? In the
profession to which I am proud to belong, there are, perhaps,
special opportunities of gaining a certain insight into the
general trade and commerce of the world, and of com-
paring the commercial vitality of the different countries.

SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION

And certainly, abroad, one finds an existing impression,
which was confirmed by the experience of my recent and
interesting colonial tour, that the superior technical and
scientific knowledge of our foreign competitors is one
reason why our hitherto pre-eminent position in manu-
factures and commerce is so considerably threatened. . . .
They (the Government) are at present not inclined to
spend more money upon equipping the laboratories. It
is therefore to the liberality of the public that we must
look not only for money, but for presents in machinery
and necessary applicances."

The sum voted by the Government for the Physical
Laboratory, an Institution second to none in its national
importance, was the very modest one of £13,000 for the
buildings and equipment, and an annual grant of £4000 x
for five years in aid of the expenses of conducting the
work of the Institution. It is therefore " to the liberality
of the public," as the Prince pointed out, " that we must
look not only for money, but also for presents of machinery
and other appliances." Several donations and gifts of
instruments have been received from private individuals
and from manufacturing firms, but much more money
will be needed if the Laboratory is to be in a position to
carry out adequately some only of the chief duties of such
a Government Institution ; especially the prosecutions of
scientific investigations, which require more uninterrupted

1 This sum has now been raised to ^5500, and after April next will be
raised further to £6000 annually. (January 1906.)

SIR THOMAS GRESHAM

BY HOLBEIN. ENGRAVED BY H. ROBINSON

SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION

time and attention on the part of the observers, or better
conditions in the way of instruments and appliances than
can be furnished in the laboratories of private individuals,
or even in those connected with the colleges and teaching
institutions of the country. A typical case in point is the
great tank which, it is hoped, may be constructed in the
grounds at Bushey for the purpose of determining the
most suitable form of build of a ship's hull from experi-
ments made on models drawn through the tank.

The practical limits of the application of the known
laws of physics are, indeed, far from having yet been reached,
and since the unexpected and brilliant discoveries of genius
cannot be commanded to order, the more immediate work
to be carried out in such a national Institution is probably
an exhaustive study of the conditions of a more perfect
adaptation of known physical and chemical laws to manu-
facturing processes, and to the arts of life. An instructive
example may be cited from the work of the German Reichs-
anstalt. It was from work of this unpretentious order,
and not by any direct scientific discovery, that the methods
and instruments for the exact measurement of high temper-
atures were so developed and made available for the use
of the workmen, that Germany has recently acquired its
supremacy in the manufacture of porcelain.

As far back as 1660, Dr. Wilkins, F.R.S., in the Preface
to his Mathematical Magick, says : " Ramus hath observed
that the reason why Germany hath been so eminent for

mechanical inventions, is because there have been public

lectures of this kind (mechanics) instituted among them,
and these not only in the learned languages but also in
the vulgar tongue, for the capacity of every unlettered
ingenious artificer."

The supreme necessity in this country of a more system-
atic application of scientific methods, both in theory
and in practice, to our manufactures and industries, which
was so wisely insisted upon by the Prince of Wales on the
occasion of his admission to the Fellowship of the Society,
and again in his Address at the Opening of the National
Laboratory, has since been confirmed and enforced in a
remarkable way by the individual testimonies of thirteen
Fellows of this Society, in the evidence which they
recently gave, from their own knowledge and experi-
ence, either as teachers of science or as leaders and
technical advisers in manufactories or commercial under-
takings, before a Committee of the London Technical
Board.

Their testimony was of no uncertain sound, but showed
clearly that the Prince's words of warning, which I have
quoted, were not unneeded, and that, indeed, our industries
and commerce are not only in danger, but are actually
passing into the hands of other countries, where scientific
research is more directly cultivated under the fostering
care of the State.

It seems to me the time has come when the President,
on this occasion speaking on his own responsibility, should

not remain silent upon a question of such urgency, and

SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION

which concerns so closely the object for which this Society
exists.

The testimony of these expert witnesses was all but
unanimous in showing that one of the most obvious short-
comings affecting our national industries, namely, the
relatively small number of suitably trained men possessing
the technical knowledge and creative skill needful for the
improvement of our chemical, electrical, and engineering
industries, must be regarded as a secondary symptom,
following upon the smallness of the demand for such men.
Further, that this smallness of demand is itself the necessary
consequence of a wider and more serious state of things,
which is affecting injuriously all our national activities,
namely, the absence, speaking generally, of a sufficiently
intelligent appreciation on the part of the leaders of the
nation, whether as legislators, capitalists, manufacturers,
or merchants, of the supreme importance of scientific
knowledge and scientific methods, not only for the success-
ful carrying on and improvement of all industrial enter-
prises, but also, and not less so, for the working out of
all national problems whatever, whether of education, of
economics, of hygiene, or especially of national defence
in the construction of our armaments by sea and by land,
and the training of our soldiers and sailors.

Here again we are face to face with a cause which is
itself secondary, and dependent upon some wider antecedent
state of things. Let us endeavour to get to the root of

the matter.

SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION

The undoubted present state of apathy of the national
mind in relation to the importance of natural knowledge,
and its consequent inability to recognise how entirely
and without exception, in every undertaking, success
must depend upon our so acting in conformity with the
laws of Nature that we have her on our side, as our ally,
and not working against us, may arise conceivably from
either of two causes : from a natural want of enterprise
and resourcefulness inherent in the national character,
or from a system of education which, relatively to the
educational training of other countries, fails to develop
and strengthen the qualities of mind which are needed for
an adequate appreciation of science.

The former of these two possible causes may surely
be dismissed at once. We need only look back in history
to see how this small northern island, by its own innate
energy, has come to be supreme over vast regions on all
parts of the earth's surface, and is now the head of an
empire which engirths the world.

We are therefore left, without power of escape, to
the second alternative, namely, that it is our system of
higher education which is in fault, clearly through being
too mediaeval in spirit. In accordance with the traditions
of the past, our higher national education deals with words
rather than with things ; it is based too exclusively on
the memory of what is known, and too little, if at all, on
individual observation and reasoning.

, The evidence seems clear, that the present inappreci-

SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION

ative attitude of our public men, and of the influential
classes of society generally, towards scientific knowledge
and methods of thought, must be attributed to the too
close adherence of our older Universities, and through
them of our public schools, and all other schools in the
country downwards, to the traditional methods of teaching
of mediaeval times. The incubus of the past makes itself
felt, especially in the too strict retention of educational
methods in which the first importance is given to the re-
production of knowledge from memory, to the acquiring
and applying of what is already known ; with little, if any,
guidance and encouragement to the undergraduate student
in the direction of research and of independent reasoning.

With the experience of Germany and the United States
before us, the direction in which we should look for $a
remedy for this state of things would seem to be for both
the teacher and the student to be less shackled by the
hampering fetters of examinational restrictions, and so
for the professor to have greater freedom as to what he
shall teach, and the student greater freedom as to what
line of study and research he may select as being best
suited to his tastes and powers.

We have before us in the United States an example
which is worthy of our consideration. With the opening
of the Johns Hopkins University in 1876, there began
in the States a movement to organise advanced study,
and especially research, for those who had already passed

through a college course of study. In the words of Pro-

SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION

fessor Butler, of Columbia University, " the combination
of collegiate and university instruction under one executive
administration is distinctive of higher education in the
United States, and its chief source of strength." The
candidate for the highest degree, Ph.D., must spend at
least two years, after obtaining his Bachelor degree, in
carrying out an investigation in the field of his main object
of study, and then submit the dissertation, which embodies
the results of his research, preferably in printed form, to
the authorities for their approval and acceptance as a
condition of receiving his degree. A similar plan of uni-
versity study has been pursued in Germany with success.

Into the dry bones of the present academic system of
reading and examination must enter the living breath of
the spirit of research, — that is to say, of the individual efforts
of each mind, for itself and in its own way, to seek to
extend our knowledge in the direction most suited to its
powers, by means of original observation and reasoning,
and aided by the imagination — it may be in the field of
science, of history and literature, or of art.

One way of bringing about reform in this direction
would be to make individual research an indispensable
condition of proceeding to degrees higher than the B.A.

It is scarcely necessary to point out that individual
training of this kind would arouse and encourage intellectual
independence of thought, and especially the power of
initiation and of original enterprise ; and further, those

creative habits of mind and that facility of resource which

FRANCIS BACON

BY P. VANSOMER. ENGRAVED BY W. H. WORTHINGTON

become daily more important in face of the complex
problems of modern life, and of the severe international
industrial competition of to-day.

The recent evidence before the Committee of the
Technical Board of Education brought out strongly the
little enthusiasm for knowledge, for its own sake, as con-
trasted with the devotion and interest given to athletic
games, which follows from the present system of our
schools.

Now the working out of some one subject by the con-
tinuous concentration of the mind upon it, which research
imposes as a condition of success, necessarily begets and
stimulates interest in it. The student soon becomes
engrossed in his chosen pursuit. In this way enthusiasm
for knowledge, for its own sake, will be awakened, and
the student no longer content to go through his work
perfunctorily, for the sake of passing his examination.
Further, from this entering into it of a new affection, the
mind of the student is no longer left empty, as is too
frequently the case under the present system, to be taken
exclusive possession of by athletics and games, until he
comes to look upon them as a chief end in themselves,
and not, as they should be regarded, as valuable means
of preserving mind and body in that healthy balance
which is most suitable for the severe and continued exercise
of the intellectual powers.

Another secondary result, the importance of which can
scarcely be over-estimated in view of the world-wide

competition of to-day, which follows from the freer and
more individual educational training of the United States
and of Germany, is found to be that as a rule the graduate,
on leaving the University, naturally transfers the con-
centration of mind, which has become habitual to him
through his research work, to the profession on which he
enters, whatever it may be. He gives to his profession
the first place in his life, bringing to bear upon it that
whole-hearted devotion and enthusiasm without which, at
the present day, mediocre success, at the best, is all that
can be looked for.

In sharp contrast to this state of things, in this country,
on the other hand, it is well known with what languid
inattention and listlessness, not to say scarcely veiled
contempt and disgust, only too frequently those who
leave the Universities and higher schools regard the work
of their profession or their official duties, and to which
consequently they give grudgingly the fewest possible
hours of soul-less attention. It is not to such men that
we can look for successors to the great men who have
passed away, or are still living, as in commerce to Rhodes
and to Carnegie, or in science to Newton, Faraday, and
Darwin.

In addition to the intellectual influence of a training
in research upon the students themselves, the official
recognition by the Universities of an original investigation
of some subject, as a necessary condition of obtaining the

higher academical honours, could scarcely fail to bring

about in the public mind a more appreciative attitude in
regard to the importance of original reasoning and discovery,
and so to a better understanding of the meaning to be
attached to natural science and to scientific methods.

The first steps in the direction of true reform must be
taken, it seems to me, by the Universities in the readjust-
ment, to some extent, of the established methods and
subjects of their examinations, for only in this way can
the schools of the country, from the higher schools
downwards, be set sufficiently free to be able to improve
and enlarge their traditional teaching, which has been
carried down, with but little change, from the Middle Ages.

This is not the place for a discussion of the extent to
which the studies of our higher schools, and secondary
education generally, require to be reformed to meet
adequately the larger needs of to-day, but it is obvious
that the direction in which changes should be made is in
that of the development of self-helpfulness and a spirit
of free inquiry, as opposed to the traditional teaching of
the past.

Above all things, such a practical study of natural
phenomena should become an essential part of our national
teaching as would draw out and foster that noblest of our
faculties, the power of image-forming in the mind, which,
in its highest and productive form, does not consist simply
of the reproduction of old experiences from the stores
of memory, but by new combinations of them — as by a

marvellous alchemy — so transmutes them as to lead to
c 33

the creation of a new imagery. This creative use of the
imagination is not only the fountain of all inspiration in
poetry and art, but is also the source of discovery in
science, and indeed supplies the initial impulse to all
development and progress. It is this creative power of
the imagination which has inspired and guided all the
great discoverers in science.

It is some satisfaction to know that a new section of
the British Association for the Advancement of Science
has been formed for the consideration and discussion in
detail, of the reforms which are needed in the educational
methods of the country.

It was clearly shown before the Board of Technical
Education, that the so-called Modern-side teaching intro-
duced into some of our public schools is not, as at present
carried on, so successful as a means of educational training
as is the traditional course. There was a consensus of
opinion that boys from the Classical side of our public
schools were better trained generally, and so showed a
greater aptitude for acquiring and applying new knowledge,
even in scientific studies, than those from the Modern
side, whose smattering of scientific facts was superficial
and of little value.

The explanation may lie in the comparative want of
experience in the art and practice of teaching of the
masters on the Modern side, together with the necessity of
cramming the memory with facts and formulae from text-
books for the purpose of passing examinations. I need

scarcely say that a mere verbal knowledge of scientific
facts has little value, and is altogether worthless as a
means of educational training. Besides, it must not be
overlooked that, as experience shows, boys of ability are
not, as a rule, attracted to join the Modern side.

Taking a wide view of the whole question, it seems to
be eminently desirable that the culture to be derived from
classical and literary studies should, as far as possible, be
retained, which would become practicable by the intro-
duction into our schools of a much keener devotion to work,
together with such improved methods of teaching languages
and mathematics, as would not only increase the educational
value of these studies, but also leave ample time for the
teaching of science, no longer, as is now the case, as a
subordinate subject to be barely tolerated, but as an
integral and essential part of all education ; it being under-
stood that such teaching of science is to take the form, as
far as possible, of the study of the phenomena of Nature
by direct observation and experiment.

It is obvious that with a fuller knowledge and apprecia-
tion of science on the part of the nation a complete change
of its practical attitude in respect of science and science
questions would necessarily follow ; for under such con-
ditions public money would be liberally voted by the
Government in aid of technical colleges and laboratories,
and in response to the larger demand that would arise for
them in all industrial enterprises, competent chemists,

electricians, and engineers would be forthcoming in sufficient

SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION

numbers, and then, as is already the case in the United
States, institutions for the teaching and advancement of
knowledge would be freely founded, and liberally endowed
by means of private benefactions.

In the meanwhile, much may be done provisionally by
our Fellows, in their individual capacity, by stimulating
and directing wisely the increased attention which is now
being given to science in all departments of life, and
especially in fostering and extending the many Technical
Colleges and Institutions which are being established in all
parts of the country.

[A primary and immediate need of this country is the
putting of more science into the Education of the country.
Not the teaching of the mere facts of science, which by
itself is of little good, but the training of the intellect by
strict scientific methods and principles.

In the coming century the race will not be to the
country of the athlete, nor to the country of the classicist,
but to the country whose men, having been trained under
the rigorous methods of science, have the knowledge, and
especially the alertness of mind, to enrich themselves out
of the open and inexhaustible treasury of Nature.]

The Fellows will view with no little satisfaction the fact
that the King has been pleased to recognise the import-
ance of science being represented on the highest judicial
body in the kingdom, by the appointment of two of our
Fellows as Privy Councillors. When we consider that at

the present time there are few important matters which

CHARLES II, FOUNDER

BY SIR P. LELY

SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION

can arise which do not include questions for the adequate
consideration of which scientific knowledge is desirable,
we cannot but feel some regret that on the King's Privy
Council there has been hitherto no official representation
of science as such, but only an incidental representation by
the occasional appointment of such distinguished men of
science as the Sovereign has delighted to honour.

II. THE RELATION OF THE ROYAL
SOCIETY TO THE SPECIALISED
SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES.

"Let knowledge grow from more to more, . . ."
TENNYSON (In Memoriam).

"What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee."

MARCUS AURELIUS (Meditations}.

From the Address delivered at the Anniversary Meeting
on November 30, 1903.

N-
WITH-
STAND-
ING the exist-
ence of three
special Socie-
ties devoted to
the promotion
of chemical
knowledge, the
recent great
development
of the study
of chemical
changes and
processes in
which electri-

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

cal forces play a large part has made strongly felt the
need of a new and more specialised society for the
study and promotion of Electro-chemistry. The newly
formed Society of Electro-chemists has taken the title —
itself an omen for good — of the Faraday Society.

This recent recognition of the need of a further differ-
entiation of chemical science, which is called for by the
remarkable activity, at the present time, of workers in
chemical and electrical physics, suggests to me that the
present occasion would be an opportune one to consider a
little carefully a subject which has been more or less before
our Fellows during the last hundred years, but at no time
has been more strongly present than it is to-day in the
minds of some of the Fellows upon whom more directly
falls the responsibility of the administration of the Society.

The matter is one which concerns so directly the advance
of science in this country, that it cannot be regarded as even
primarily a question of the internal organisation of the
Royal Society. If further justification were needed for
speaking of the subject on this occasion, I have but to
quote the recently published words of one of our Fellows : —

" The progressive specialisation and differentiation of
Learned Societies is known to every student of history, and
it remains a grave question how long National Academies
and Royal Societies can maintain their old lines of publi-
cation and of constitution." That is, as he proceeds to
argue, can maintain their high position of distinction and
of influence, without some reform in the direction of the

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

co-ordination with themselves of the existing special
Societies.

The Royal Society has been itself the most active agent
in bringing about, through the great increase of natural
knowledge which it has effected, the present state of things,
by which its own relation to the science of the country has
of necessity undergone no inconsiderable change.

[In accordance with the national character of independ-
ence and individual freedom which are natural to us, the
Society has remained a private body, maintained by the
subscriptions of its Fellows, free from State control of
every kind, accepting no pay from the Government, and
no assistance except in regard of the rooms in which it
carries on its work. Yet, as the representative head of the
science of the country, it has always been as ready as if it
were a subsidised Academy, to act as the acknowledged
referee which the Government might consult with respect
of any matters requiring expert scientific knowledge. This
unique position of the Society among other Academies has
been reached slowly during two and a half centuries, by its
unwearied pursuit of truth for truth's sake without fee or
reward. This position is maintained by the distinction
of its Fellows, which is secured by the severe competi-
tion of selection through which the 15 Fellows annually
elected have to pass, out of a list of candidates about five
times as great. The annual payment in money forms
but a very small part of the contribution which the Fellows

are proud to make for the promotion of science. Far

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

heavier have been the sacrifices of time and energy which
the ever-increasing activity of the Society has called
for in the attendance on very frequent Council and
Committee Meetings.]

At the time of the foundation of the Royal Society, and
for more than a generation following, the newly born
Natural Philosophy, in contradistinction to the syllogistic
philosophy of the schools — or, in other words, the science
of natural knowledge promoted by experiment and in-
duction— had not advanced beyond the most general stage.
The whole of our knowledge derived from direct observation
and experiment of what is upon and within the earth, and
of the heavens above, was then well within the fostering
and the publishing power of one Society. Geology was
not yet born. Electricity and Magnetism had advanced
but little beyond the simplest facts as first philosophically
arranged by Gilbert in the preceding century, the ter-
centenary of whose death occurs to-day. What then
passed for chemistry was little more than the gropings
of the alchemists, and the preparation of the simplest
medicines. The telescope and the microscope were only
just coming into use as instruments of discovery.

Through the Society's own activity, as our knowledge
increased, and the number of workers in science became
greater by the successive differentiation of phenomena,
which is at the root of all progress, the inevitable specialisa-
tion of natural knowledge into distinct branches rapidly
advanced, until at last these specialised activities found

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

themselves confined and trammelled by the necessary
limitations of one Society. The pressure from within
became gradually too great to be controlled, and could
find relief only in one of two ways — by the division of
the Society itself into a number of sections or branches
which remained integral parts of the Society, or else by,
what actually happened, the successive formation and
swarming off, as the need arose, of special Societies re-
stricted to the study and promotion of a single branch
of science.

; These new, but in no respect rival associations, were
)m the first independent bodies, which retained no
nnection with the Royal Society, other than the
purely friendly one which necessarily followed from the
leadership of the new Societies being in the hands of its
Fellows.

Even as Fellows, we must place before the interests
of the Society itself, tho^e of the object for which it was
founded and still exists, namely, the " promotion of
natural knowledge " ; we must rejoice, therefore, and
indeed the more so in this case, as the interests of the
Society and of science do not clash but support and pro-
mote each other, that the new and ever-increasing needs
following upon the specialisation of the Fellows into
groups, engaged in the study of some differentiated branch
of knowledge, were not met by the inadequate and inelastic
plan of sectional division of the Society itself. No argu-
ments are necessary to-day ; we have but to look at the

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

large membership and the great activity of the many
specialised Societies to be convinced that the needful
freedom and room for their rapid growth and expansion
would have been altogether wanting in any plan of division
of the Royal Society itself into sections for the separate
study of distinct regions of natural phenomena.

Especially in any such sectional sub-division of the
Society, the necessary room for freedom of action would
have been wanting in one direction of first importance,
which, perhaps more than any other, has contributed to
the rapid development and prosperity of the special
Societies, namely, the power which these Societies possess,
and which they have so largely used, of associating with
themselves freely the younger men working on the same
subject, who bring with them the enthusiastic energy and
the power of origination which are largely present in
youth ; men too young to have any claim to the member-
ship of an Academy, and whose admission in any number
Jo its different sections would necessarily take from its
select and exclusive character, and its distinctive position
as an Academy.

In the Academic des Sciences, one of the five Academies
which together form the Institut de France, we have
before us an illustration of a sectional Academy. L' Aca-
demic des Sciences is divided into eleven sections, each
devoted to a separate branch of science. The total number
of members and correspondents, however, is less than half

that of the Fellows of the Royal Society. This sectional

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

division has not met the need for greater room for ex-
pansion as science has advanced, and has not prevented
the formation of specialised Societies in Paris outside the
Academy, similar to those which have grown up around
the Royal Society in this country.

Indeed, the Institut de France, by its already somewhat
antiquated limitations, as shown by the payment of
members, by the methods of the election of its members,
and especially by its close connection with and dependence
upon the Government of the day, has less flexibility of
adaptation to new conditions than the Royal Society,
and, I need scarcely say, is not in harmony with the freer
spirit of this country, or with the trend of modern thought,
which is undoubtedly towards individualism ; of which
general tendency, though no doubt also influenced by
local interests, the recent breaking up of the Victoria
University into three independent bodies may perhaps
be mentioned as an illustration.

The earliest instance of the sub-division or specialisa-
tion of scientific studies in this country, by the establish-
ment of a distinct association for the cultivation of one
branch of natural knowledge, took place in 1788 by the
foundation of the Linnean Society under the auspices of
Sir James Edward Smith, Sir Joseph Banks, and other
Fellows of the Royal Society. I should mention, perhaps,
that seven years earlier the Fellows of our Society who
were chemists had formed an association, or perhaps

more correctly a club, which met fortnightly at a coffee-

WILLIAM., HARVEY

BY JAN DE KEVN

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

house for the discussion of chemical subjects, but after
a short time the meetings were discontinued.

In his Introductory Address, when the Linnean Society
was formed, Sir James Smith gave as the principal reason
for the institution of a new Society outside the Royal
Society for the promotion of Botanical studies, that
"It is altogether incompatible with the plan of the Royal
Society, engaged as it is in all branches of philosophy,
to enter into the minutiae of Natural History ; such an
Institution, therefore, as ours is absolutely necessary."
This Society, though auxiliary in its aims and objects,
since it was formed for the promotion of one branch of
natural knowledge, and was carried on under the leader-
ship of Fellows of the Royal Society, existed from the
first as an independent body under its own Charter.

Later on, as the inevitable outcome of the evolutionary
increase of " Natural Knowledge," the Fellows who were
geologists, feeling the necessity of a separate association
for the fuller discussion of mineralogical and geological
subjects, under the leadership of Dr. Babington, the
Count of Bournon, and Sir Abraham Hume, all three
Fellows of the Royal Society, instituted in 1807 another
special Society after the order of the Linnean, to be called
" The Geological Society of London." An attempt was *~~
made shortly after its formation to consolidate the new
Society with the Royal Society as an assistant Society.

It is of interest to-day for us to consider the conditions

under which it was proposed that the new Society should

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

remain in vital union with, or rather indeed as an integral
part of, the mother Society ; and also the reasons which,
after discussion, decided the Fellows who formed the
members of the recently instituted Geological Society to
forego the obvious advantages of remaining in intimate
connection with so powerful a body as the Royal
Society, and to prefer to set up for themselves, and to
make their own way as a wholly free and independent
body.

The two principal conditions of the plan by which it
was proposed that the newly constituted Society should
remain permanently connected with the parent body were,
—first, that the Members of the Geological Society who
were Fellows of the Royal Society should constitute a
distinct first class, or Council, who should be entrusted
with the entire management of the Society, while the
other Subscribing Members should form a second class,
and be distinguished as Assistant Members. The second
condition was, that this first class, or Council, should
communicate regularly to the Council of the Royal Society
all papers and communications received by them, in
order that that body might select such papers as it pleased,
to be read at its meetings, and to be printed in the Philo-
sophical Transactions ; the papers not so selected to be
returned to the new Society, to be dealt with in such
way as it might decide.

At the special general meeting of the recently formed

Geological Society, which was called to consider the fore-

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

going plan of consolidation with the Royal Society, the
following Resolution was carried : " That any proposition
tending to render this Society dependent upon or sub-
servient to any other Society does not correspond with
the conception this meeting entertains of the original
principles upon which the Geological Society was founded.
That the propositions communicated by the Right Hon-
ourable Charles Greville, having a direct tendency to
render this Society dependent upon and subservient to
the Royal Society, are inadmissible."

The scientific world, as well as the Geological Society
itself, have good reason to rejoice over the wise and far-
seeing policy of its founders and original members, when
they decided to leave the young Society free to grow and
to develop its powers untrammelled by any obligations
to any other body, a course which the past progress of
the Society, the eminent services which it has now for
nearly a century rendered to the promotion of Natural
Knowledge, and the scientific distinction and the wide
influence which it possesses to-day, in the fullest degree
justify and confirm.

History repeats itself. Nearly ninety years later the
question of the relation of the special Societies to the Royal
Society, which had been raised and discussed at the time
of the institution of the Geological Society, was again
brought forward as one urgently needing consideration, in
consequence of the large and increasing number and im-
portance of the special Societies which had risen up about

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

the Royal Society, and were more or less under the leader-
ship of its Fellows.

About ten years ago this question was formally raised
by the senior Secretary, who, in a letter addressed to the
President for the consideration of the Council, asked
whether, in view of the development of the several special
Societies, and the increase in number and importance of
the independent scientific periodicals, the time had not
come when changes beneficial to science and to the Societies
themselves, alike in the conduct of the Royal Society and
in its methods of publication, might not be introduced,
based upon a formal understanding and arrangement for
co-operation with the more important of the several
Societies formed for the study and promotion of separate
branches of science.

A strong Committee was appointed, which held numerous
meetings extending over a year. Several plans for a more
or less close affiliation of the principal special Societies
with the Royal Society were proposed in considerable
detail by members of the Committee, and these were
subjected, in succession, to a very critical consideration,
and to prolonged discussion at its numerous meetings.

The members of the Committee who were in favour of
an organic affiliation of the specialised Societies with the
Royal Society, though differing from each other as to the
details of the formal arrangement by which it should be
carried out, were in general agreement that it should

provide an effective representation of the several Societies,

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

preferentially through such of their members as were
Fellows of the Royal Society, upon a General Committee
which could deal with the distribution between the Societies,
both for reading and discussion, and afterwards for publi-
cation, of all the papers sent in to the Societies. It was
suggested by some members of Committee, that the Royal
Society might avail itself, with advantage, of the organisa-
tion and expert knowledge of the Councils of the special
Societies, for assistance in dealing with the selection of
communications for publication, and also indeed in the
selection of its Fellows.

On the other hand, it was argued, and by a majority
of the Committee, that affiliation in any form, even if
restricted to matters of publication, involved mutual
obligations, and so to some extent a sacrifice of independ-
ence alike on the part of the Royal Society and of the
special Societies, which could not but be opposed to their
true interests and progress, and especially would be out
of harmony with the trend of modern thought, and the
newer conditions coming in from the ever widening differ-
entiation of scientific studies.

One member of the Committee, who, from the leading
part he then took in the management of one of the most
important of the special Societies, might claim to be
regarded as representing the view which would be held by
these Societies of any such small sacrifice of independence
as would be necessarily involved in the obligations con-
nected with any form of true affiliation with the Royal
D 49

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

Society, as the chief Society, expressed the decided opinion
that " It would be impossible for his Society even to
contemplate handing over any portion of its work to the
Royal Society. The proper jealousy of its younger
Fellows — not Fellows of the Royal Society — would render
this impossible even if it were desirable on other grounds,
. . . such a course would be entirely subversive of the
true interests of the special Society." Then, paraphrasing
the words of Lord Sherbrooke in speaking of Imperial
and Colonial legislation, he went on to say that '" the
prosperity of the whole is best secured by making each
part prosperous ; that there is no conflict between the
interests of the special Societies and those of the Royal
Society, and that the notion of sacrificing, in however
small degree, the former to the latter originates in the
narrow and selfish view of a part, and not in a compre-
hensive view of the whole."

Another member of Committee, a professor in one of
our Universities, took a very decided view of the matter
in debate. " I entirely object," he said, " to allowing
any other Society to take part in the administrative affairs
of the Royal Society, and similarly deprecate any suggestion
that the Royal Society should involve itself in the affairs
of other Societies."

In their final Report, the Committee reported to the
Council as follows : " The Committee gave much considera-
tion to the general question whether or not it is desirable

that the Royal Society should propose to enter into formal

HON. ROBERT BOYLE, F.R.S.

BY F. KERSEBOOM

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

relations with important Special or Local Societies in
reference to the publication of papers and other matters.
After long discussion, the Committee decided by a con-
siderable majority that it was not desirable."

I may say in passing, that the principal outcome of
the prolonged labours of the Committee was the institution
of the present Sectional Committees within the Society ;
and also the present Standing Order that " In each year
certain ordinary meetings, not more than four in number,
shall be devoted, each to the hearing and consideration
of some one important communication, or to the discussion
of some important topic."

It is instructive to note that the deliberate opinion of
a considerable majority of this recent Committee was
practically identical with the resolution passed ninety
years before by the recently constituted Geological Society,
—namely, to the effect that affiliation, or any other form of
union through which one Society should become in any
respect dependent upon or subservient to any other
Society, is out of harmony with the original principles
which determined their separate formation, and cannot
fail to trammel and so to retard their free and natural
individual expansion and development.

Even if it were possible for the Royal Society to agree
with the specialised Societies upon some organised plan
of working together, it seems more than probable that,
sooner or later, sources of friction would come in, since we
have to do with associations which have been absolutely

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

free from their birth, and have been instituted upon
principles of absolute independence.

It is not to be denied that in theory an attractive
picture may be imagined in the mind of a British Imperial
Scientific Association with the Royal Society at the head,
and all the special Societies as independent Common-
wealths so far as their internal interests are concerned, but
federated with it for all purposes of advancing knowledge
by research and discussion, and for the distribution of
new knowledge by common methods of publication.

Such a picture, like a beautiful mirage, disappears as
we approach nearer to consider in detail the practical
working of such an Association of Societies.

Speaking for myself alone, the Committee were, I think,
fully justified in the decision to which they came in re-
commending that the Royal Society, both as to its ad-
ministration and its work, should remain as heretofore free
from any trammels of obligations undertaken with other
Societies. Whatever the views we may hold personally on
this point, there can be little doubt that it would not be for
the welfare of the Society to re-open, at the present time,
a question which was recently settled by a considerable
majority of a Committee after a very prolonged and
searching inquiry.

The question which still remains open, and which, it
seems to me, we may profitably consider now, is whether it
would not be possible, without entering into any formal

relationship with the special Societies, for the Royal Society

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

to take some steps to meet the pressing need of integration
in respect of its own publications and those of the special
Societies.

Putting aside book publication, which at the present
time is very little employed for making known original
work, there remain as the two chief methods for publishing
newly discovered knowledge, the scientific Journal and
the Proceedings and Transactions of learned Societies.
To meet the demands of the present time, it is of the highest
importance that the publications of scientific Societies
should appear with as little delay as may be, and should
be circulated directly, so as to reach them as soon as possible,
among the students of the particular branch of science to
which they respectively belong. In this respect the Pro-
ceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society have been
up to this time at some disadvantage. Papers on the
different branches of science printed in them do not circulate
so fully at once among the workers in those several branches
as they would do if they had been contributed to, and
published by, the special Societies formed for the pro-
motion of these several sciences.

It appears to me that an important step would be taken
towards the removal of this disability, under which an
Academy or Royal Society, for the promotion of all the
sciences, necessarily labours ; and also, at the same time,
that an advance would be made in the direction of the
integration of scientific publications, if the Royal Society

were to offer to extend to the more important of the special

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

Societies the privilege already granted to and eagerly

accepted by the Royal Astronomical Society, of duplicate
publication in their own Memoirs of all astronomical papers
which are printed in our Transactions.

A similar open offer extended to the principal specialised
Societies, which they would be free to accept or to decline,
of facilities for the simultaneous duplicate publication in
their own Transactions of all papers communicated to the
Royal Society which concern their respective sciences,
would leave to them their complete independence, and not
involve the Royal Society in any obligation to them which
would in any way interfere with its own free administrative
working.

An arrangement on these lines could be carried out at
a minimum of cost to both Societies, by the simple plan
that the duplicate copies of any paper required by the
special Society should be struck off at one setting up in
type. It would only be fair that the total expense should
be divided, the special Society paying, beyond the actual
cost of the printing off of its own copies, some portion,
possibly a small one, of the expense of the setting up in type.

Modest as this suggestion may appear at first sight, it
would, I believe, do not a little to keep the Royal Society in
constant touch with its daughter Societies ; and it would
most certainly be to the advantage of the authors of papers,
in assuring to them the immediate circulation of their
communications among those, in this country and abroad,

who have special knowledge of the subject and are working

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

in the same field. Such an arrangement for duplicate, or
if necessary even multiple, publication would probably
determine many scientific workers to bring their best
results to the Royal Society, especially in the case of such
work which, as so often occurs at the present day, concerns
two or more branches of science.

The special position of the Royal Society, as head of
the science of the nation, would thus be upheld without any
relinquishment by the specialised Societies of their full
autonomy, and indeed would be to their own advantage as
auxiliary and independent bodies. The importance to the
interests of the nation, as well as to the progress of science,
of the maintenance of one chief Royal Society, devoted to
all the sciences, is not less because of the co-existence with
it of Societies devoted to separate differentiated branches
of Natural Knowledge. Naturally, as consisting of the
most eminent workers in different departments of the
Mathematical, Physical, and Natural History sciences,
the Royal Society represents on all occasions British science,
both at home and abroad, and takes the place, as adviser to
the Government, and as its referee on all national scientific
questions ; an adviser all the more trustworthy because
unendowed and independent of the Government of the
day.

The suggestion which I have made does not provide
any remedy for one disadvantage which is inseparable from
a Royal Society, namely, that in consequence of the mixed

character of the papers usually read at a single sitting, a

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

full discussion, such as may well arise in a specialised
Society, is not often possible.

In the case of the Royal Society, this absence of op-
portunity for discussion at ordinary meetings is to some
extent provided for by the Standing Order, that in each
year as many as four meetings may be set apart for the
discussion of some important topic. In addition to this
provision for exceptional discussion, the Secretaries do
all that is in their power to have papers on the Mathematical
and Physical sciences, and those on Physiology and Natural
History, taken respectively at alternate meetings, but it
is obvious that such an arrangement cannot be strictly
carried out, because authors are always anxious that their
papers shall be read with as little delay as possible, and
therefore with as little interference as may be with the
order in which they have been received. Any plan that
might be suggested to differentiate the papers into special-
ised groups, so as to encourage a larger attendance of
specialists at the meetings when they would be read, would
be, in consequence of the longer delay in the publication of
new work, neither acceptable to the Fellows nor favourable
to the progress of science. Considering the highly special-
ised and necessarily detailed nature of the larger number
of the papers received by the Society, it is a question to
which more than one answer may be given, whether the
subject of a paper is much advanced by a discussion
founded on the abstract, which can alone be read at the

meeting, and whether the time has not come when adequate

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

discussion, even if the presence of specialists could be
secured, is no longer possible at ordinary meetings, and,
indeed, can only properly take place when the full com-
munication is in print. I may remark that the mixed
character of the papers read at one meeting of the Royal
Society is certainly not greater than is the case at the
meetings of the French Academic des Sciences.

The adoption of the plan which I have suggested of
duplicate publication of course presupposes uniformity
of size of their publications with that adopted by the
Royal Society, by such of the special Societies as may
wish to avail themselves of the Royal Society's offer,
in itself an incidental advantage of some account. If,
therefore, an arrangement on these lines should meet the
approval of the Fellows, the present time would be an
appropriate one for the consideration whether some altera-
tion might not be made in our own publications with
great advantage to the more speedy appearance of com-
munications of some length, as well as to some reduction
in the cost, compared with the printing of them, as at
present, in the Society's Transactions.

A change of great value in this direction could, I think,
be made by enlarging the size of the present Proceedings,
which, in consequence of their small size, are only suitable
for short papers which do not require extensive illustration,
to the larger size of royal octavo. The Proceedings might
then take the position of being the Society's chief publica-
tion, the Transactions appearing less frequently and being

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

reserved for papers of exceptional length and completeness.
The present reputation for superior excellence which
seems to be associated with the appearance of a paper
in the Transactions would disappear, and authors of papers
would soon come to prefer the more speedy publication
in the Proceedings in its new and enlarged form.

The cost of printing and of illustrations would be con-
siderably reduced, and so afford funds for the increased
number of papers which would probably be received by
the Society under the system of duplicate publication.

If it were decided by this enlargement of size to exalt
the Proceedings to a higher place in the Society's publi-
cations, it would become a matter for consideration whether
it might be desirable to adopt the plan of division of subjects,
which is in use for the Philosophical Transactions, and
bring out the Proceedings in two series : Series A for
papers which are of a mathematical or physical character ;
and Series B for biological papers.1

I have not hitherto mentioned the reduplication of
the special Societies of the Metropolis by the formation
of local Societies in other centres of population and in-
telligence, for the study and promotion of the same sciences.
The separate existence of these provincial associations
is fully justified by geographical reasons.

A great step in advance has been taken by the Society
of Antiquaries, to which I would call attention as well

1 The Proceedings are now published in an enlarged form, and in two
series, as suggested in the text. (1906.)

SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN, P.R.S.

BY SIR P. LELY

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

worthy of imitation by the other special Societies of
London. This Society has brought into union with itself
nearly all the local archaeological associations, some forty-
five in number, by holding an annual Congress at its apart-
ments in Burlington House. Each Society, while retaining
its own independent individuality, co-operates with the
others in matters of common interest, and one important
result of their collective action is an annual classified
index of all the archaeological papers of the year.

[The Royal Society by its high traditions holds a unique
position in the van of scientific progress, as the adviser
and guide of the nation in all matters which require scientific
knowledge and insight. These matters are, indeed, legion ;
for all things, within and without us, are determined by
the things which preceded them. Milton was not right.
Chance, as high arbiter, does not govern all, though there

may be times when

"We profess

Ourselves to be the slaves of chance and the flies
Of every wind that blows."

In truth, law, not chance, rules all. The object set before
itself by the Royal Society is to discover and to study those
laws of nature which are at the root of our very life, whether
personal, industrial, or national. When the Society re-
ceived its Charter from Charles u., its Fellows were as men
feeling and groping after truth in nature, if haply they
might find it ; now they form a great army of explorers

already in possession of a new world of knowledge, in the

THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

discovery of which the Royal Society has itself played
largely the part of Columbus. Contrast the view of nature
which was common in the middle of the seventeenth century
with that open before us to-day. One of our early Fellows
tells us how trees were regarded by noblemen of his time,
who considered them to be excrescences from the earth
provided by Divine wisdom to enable a gentleman to pay
his debts. To-day, even to a man of average culture,
how rich is the concatenation of ideas which group them-
selves about even so familiar an object as a tree — its place
in the evolution of plant life, all the physical and chemical
problems associated with its growth by the assimilation
of matter from the earth and air, its relation to insect and
animal life, to the health and needs of man, and to con-
ditions of climate.

Touched by science, the eye is opened to perceive
behind Nature's outward aspect of form and colour, on
which the artist delights to dwell, an inner world of
life and relationships of not less beauty, and of infinite
wonder and variety.]

III. THE ADVISORY RELATION OF THE
ROYAL SOCIETY TO THE STATE,
AND THE RESPONSIBLE PUBLIC
DUTIES WHICH REST PERMAN-
ENTLY UPON THE SOCIETY.

"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret
motions of things ; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to
the effecting of all things possible." — F. BACON (New Atlantis').

From the Address delivered at the Anniversary Meeting
on November 30, 1904.

DURING
the last
few years
a very large
amount, i n-
creasing each
year, of work
outside the read-
ing, discussion,
and printing of
papers, of a
more or less
public charac-
ter, has been
thrown upon the
Royal Society —
so large, indeed,

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

as at present to tax the Society's powers to the utmost.
A not inconsiderable part of this work has come from the
initiation by the Society itself of new undertakings, but
mainly it has consisted of assistance freely given, at their
request, to different Departments of the Government on
questions which require expert scientific knowledge, and
which involves no small amount of labour on the part of
the officers and staff, and much free sacrifice of time and
energy from Fellows, in most cases living at a distance.

There is little doubt that this largely increased amount
of public work has arisen in part naturally from the greater
scientific activity of the present day, but also, and to a
greater extent, from the fuller recognition by the Govern-
ment and the public of the need for scientific advice and
direction in connection with many matters of national
concern.

It may not be inopportune, therefore, for me to say
a few words on the advisory relation in which the Society
has come to stand to the Government, and to review very
briefly the great work which the Society has done, and
is doing, for the nation.

Among Academies and learned Societies the position
of the Royal Society is, in some respects, an exceptional
one. In the British dominions it holds a unique position,
not only as the earliest chartered scientific Society, but
in its own right, on account of the number of eminent
men included in its Fellowship, and the close connection

in which it stands, though remaining a private institution,

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

with the Government. The Royal Society is a private
learned body, consisting of a voluntary and independent
association of students of science united for the pro-
motion of Natural Knowledge at their own cost.

[The identity of life of the Royal Society, as shown
in its aims and in its work, has continued with a singular
persistency from its foundation to the present time,
though no doubt its life has been more vigorously active
during some periods of its history than at others.

The Royal Society, as it exists to-day, can scarcely
be more accurately described than in the words of a
manuscript poem preserved in the British Museum, written
soon after the Society's incorporation nearly two centuries
and a half ago —

"This noble learned corporation,

Not for themselves are thus combined
To prove all things by demonstration,
But for the public good of the nation
And general benefit of mankind."

The contemporary poet, Cowley, describes the newly
incorporated Royal Society more concisely, and certainly
with more poetic feeling, in a single line —

"So human for its use, for knowledge so divine."

From its incorporation by Charles n. to the present
time, the Royal Society has, with untiring energy and
with steadfast aim, pursued the great object for which
it was founded, " The improvement of Natural Know-
ledge " ; and during long periods of scientific gloom has

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

maintained alight the lamp of pure science, when it was
practically extinct in the national seats of learning.]

It asks for no endowment from the State, for it could
not tolerate the control from without which follows the
acceptance of public money, nor permit of that inter-
ference with its internal affairs which, as is seen in some
foreign Academies, is associated with State endowment.
In one particular case, in which it can receive aid without
any loss of independence, the Society gratefully acknow-
ledges its indebtedness to the State. About 1780 the
Society received a communication from the Government

-— — '

offering to provide apartments for the Society at Somerset
House ; these were exchanged, in 1857, f°r rooms in old
Burlington House ; after its rebuilding, in 1873, the
Society moved into the apartments which it now occupies.
It should not be forgotten that nearly a century before
the opening of the British Museum, in 1759, the Royal
Society's Museum, or Repository as it was called, enjoyed
— 4:he prestige of being regarded as the most important
Museum in London, and must have been of great use to
men of science, and have aided materially in promoting
and disseminating the knowledge of natural history.
The apartments offered to the Society at Somerset House
were quite insufficient in capacity and in number to receive
the Society's Museum, and in consequence this collection,
which had been carefully maintained not only from the
scientific side, but also with reference to the commercial

value and importance of the foreign objects received,

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

especially of the valuable zoological specimens frequently
H u Jsuu*5 Bay Company from their territories,

was presented by the Society to the nation, a not unworthy
acknowledgment, on the Society's part, of the Govern-
ment's gift of apartments. This collection has not been
kept separate, but is now hopelessly dispersed among the
thousands of specimens which crowd the halls of the
British Museum. Some specimens, however, in com-
parative anatomy, preserved in the Museum of the
College of Surgeons, are duly entered in the catalogue
as having belonged originally to the Royal Society's
Museum.

Besides the grant of apartments in Somerset House,
and subsequently in Burlington House, the Society has
received no pecuniary support from Government, nor
assistance of any kind, with one exception to be mentioned
farther on, beyond the grant by Charles n., shortly after
its incorporation, of Chelsea College and the lands apper-
taining to it ; a gift which proved much less valuable than
appeared from the parchments. Claimants at once came
forward for portions of the estate, and the property was
in so unsettled a state as to title, and so much out of
repair, that after much money had been spent on repairing
the College, and great exertions made in vain to procure
a tenant, the President was authorised to sell the estate
to the King for the sum of £1300 ; the Council voting
their thanks to him for " thus disposing of a property

which was a source of continual annoyance and trouble
E 65

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

to them." To the extent of this sum the Society's funds
were enriched by the royal gift.

The grants of £4000 and £1000 now received annually
by the Royal Society from the Government are not applic-

able to its own needs, but are placed in its hands in trust

for grants in aid of the prosecution of scientific research,
and of the publication of scientific papers ; indeed, with
the exception of part of the publication grant, are so far
from being of the nature of a State bounty, that the careful
administration of these grants brings no light burden upon
the Society.

It may not be generally known that the Royal Society
just missed becoming a richly endowed Society. Charles
ii.'s interest in the young Society did not end with
the grant of a Charter of Incorporation, for in 1662 he
addressed a letter, written with his own hand, to the
Duke of Ormonde, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,
recommending the Royal Society for a " liberal contribu-
tion from the adventurers and officers of Ireland for the
better encouragement of them in their designs." That
is to say, in the new settlement in that country, on the
/ Restoration, of the confiscated estates of such persons as
by the King's declaration were disqualified. The Royal
Society had but a poor chance, notwithstanding the King's
letter, of coming in for a portion of these so-called " frac-
tions," when so many high families were cheated of their
rights, and the Duke's own estates, through his methods

of adjudication, increased from £7,000 to £80,000 per

JOHN EVELYN, SEC. R.S.

BY F. KERSEBOOM

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

annum. Sir William Petty, in a document preserved in
the archives of the Society, estimates the value of the
lands granted by the King to the Society, but not received
by them, " as a great matter, but I know not what."

It is on record that the non-fulfilment of the King's
generous intentions towards the Society did not damp
the philosophic ardour of the Fellows ; indeed, it is a
question on which opinions may widely differ whether
the rich endowment of the Society, almost from its very
birth, would have increased its scientific success. We
must not forget that, in the case of institutions as well
as of individuals, a powerful and healthy stimulus to the
exertion needful for success arises from the necessity of
coping with and overcoming difficulties, whether of a
monetary or other kind. In no small degree was due to
the personal favour with which Charles n. regarded the
Society the exceptional position it early took up, and
which it still holds to-day, of a private institution supported
and controlled from within, which at the same time is
acknowledged by the State as the authoritative national
representative of science in this country, and from time
to time consulted as such.

The first royal act which distinctly gave this repre-
sentative character to the newly chartered Society appears
to have been the King's declaring his pleasure, on the
15 th October 1662, " that no patent should pass for any
philosophical or mechnical invention until examined by

the Society." This personal recognition by the King of

the national position of the Society was followed and
confirmed a few years later by a request from the Depart-
ment of the Admiralty, for assistance from the Royal
Society in raising some ships sunk off Woolwich. The
Council replied that, though they would have great
pleasure in affording all assistance in their power by
advice, the want of funds rendered it impossible for them
to provide the necessary machinery.

From that time down to the present, the Royal Society,
while remaining a purely private institution for the pro-
motion of Natural Knowledge, has been regarded by the
Government as the acknowledged national scientific body,
whose advice is of the highest authority on all scientific
questions, and the more to be trusted on account of the
Society's financial independence ; a body which, through
its intimate relations with the learned Societies of the
Colonies, has now become the centre of British science.
The Society's historical position and the scientific eminence
of its Fellows have made it naturally the body which the
scientific authorities of foreign countries regard as repre-
senting the science of the Empire, and with which they
are anxious to consult and to co-operate, from time to
time, on scientific questions of international importance.

On their part, the Fellows of the Royal Society, re-
membering that the promotion of Natural Knowledge is
the great object for which it was founded and still exists,
and that all undertakings in the home and in the State,

since they are concerned with Nature, can be wisely directed

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

and carried on with the highest efficiency only as they are
based upon a knowledge of Nature, have always recognised
the fundamental importance of the Society's work to
national as well as to individual success and prosperity,
and their own responsibility as the depositaries of such
knowledge. They have always been willing, even at
great personal cost, ungrudgingly to afford any assistance
in their power to the Government on all questions referred
to them which depend upon technical knowledge, or which
require the employment of scientific methods. In par-
ticular, the Society has naturally always been eager to help
forward, and even to initiate, such national undertakings
as voyages of observation or of discovery of any kind, or
for the investigation of the incidence of disease, which have
for their express object the increase of Natural Knowledge.
At the same time, as the Society is dependent upon the
voluntary help of its Fellows, whose time is fully occupied
with their own work, the Society may reasonably expect
the Government not to ask for assistance on any matters
of mere administration that could be otherwise efficiently
provided for. The hope may be expressed that in the
near future, with increased official provision in connection
with the recognition of science, the relation of the Society
to the Government may not extend beyond that of a purely
advisory body, so that the heavy responsibilities now rest-
ing upon it, in respect of the carrying out of many public
undertakings on which its advice has been asked, may no

longer press unduly, as they certainly do at present, upon

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

the time and energy of the Officers and Members of Com-
mittees. The Society regards this outside work, important
as it is, as extraneous, and therefore as subordinate, and
would not be justified in permitting such work to interfere
with the strict prosecution of pure natural science as the
primary purpose of the Society's existence, upon which,
indeed, the Society's importance as an advisory body
ultimately depends.

The array of national undertakings of which the Society
has been wholly or in part in charge, or to which it has
given advice or assistance from time to time, is so very
great, that any attempt to point out, even in broad outline,
the more important of the directions in which the Society's
influence has been actively employed for the public service
must necessarily be fragmentary and very incomplete.
On this occasion it is not possible to do more than to give,
in a few sentences, a rapid presentation of a few typical
examples of the Society's public work.

It must be borne in mind that the bare statement in
a few sentences of the public work accomplished by the
Society fails altogether to bring before the imagination
an adequate conception of the large amount of free labour
ungrudgingly given by those Fellows who composed the
several Committees to which the work was entrusted.

Going back to the first century of the Society's existence,
the work done for the National Observatory at Greenwich
may be fairly taken as typical of the Society's outside

activity at that time. It is not too much to say that the

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

Observatory owes, in no small degree, its early efficiency
and the high position it soon reached, to the advice and
the energetic action on its behalf of the Royal Society.
The Observatory, at the time it was placed, in 1710, by
Queen Anne in the sole charge of the Society, was without
instruments, except such as Flamsteed had himself supplied.
Immediately on taking charge, the Society appointed a
Committee which visited Greenwich, and as a result sent
in an application to the Ordnance Office, but at the time
unsuccessfully, for the new instruments which were
absolutely essential for properly carrying on the work of
an observatory. The little interest taken by the Govern-
ment of that day in science is manifest from the answer
received from the Ordnance Office, " that they had never
been at any charge for instruments, but only for repairing
the house and paying Mr. Flamsteed' s salary." The
Society persevered, and when in 1720 Halley succeeded
Flamsteed, was successful in persuading the Government
to provide a few of the more necessary instruments. At
a little later date the Society induced the Government
to expend £1000 on instruments, to be constructed by
Graham and Bird. When George m. came to the throne,
he re-appointed the Society as sole Visitors, and ordered
the Astronomer Royal to obey the regulations drawn up
by the Council, and commanded the Master General of
Ordnance to furnish such instruments as the Council
should think necessary for the Observatory. In the list
of these instruments is mentioned a ten-foot telescope of

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

Dollond's " new invention." Further, it was in answer
to a petition from the Royal Society that the King gave
orders for the printing of the Observations made at the
Observatory. At a later date the Society called on the
Government to advance funds to establish magnetical
observatories at Greenwich, and in various parts of the
British dominions, with the result that in a few years no
fewer than forty magnetical establishments were in full
activity.

In connection with the Observatory may be mentioned
the considerable share which the Society took in bringing
about the important alteration of the calendar, known
as the Change of Style, which took place in 1752. The
Bill was drawn up by Peter Davall, the Secretary of the
Society, aided and supported by Lord Macclesfield, who
became President the same year. The change was approved
and assisted by the actual President, Martin Folkes. The
feeling of the people was so strongly against the change,
that the illness and death of Bradley, who as Astronomer
Royal had assisted the Government with his advice, which
took place not long afterwards, were popularly attributed
to a judgment from Heaven.

Very brief must be the mention of some of the other
works in the public service which were carried out at a
no small cost of labour to the Fellows of the Society.

About 1750, the Lord Mayor of London, two of the
Judges, and an Alderman, having died in one year from

jail-fever caught at the Old Bailey Sessions, the Society

SIR ISAAC NEWTON, P.R.S.

BY J. VANDEKBANK

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

was called upon for advice and assistance. A Committee
was appointed to investigate the wretched state of ventila-
tion in jails. A ventilator, invented by one of the Com-
mittee, was erected in Newgate, reducing at once the
number of deaths from eight a week to about two a month.
Of the eleven workmen employed to put up the ventilator,
seven caught the fever and died.

At the request of the Government, Committees were
appointed to consider the best form of protection of build-
ings, and, later on, of ships at sea, from lightning.

The Society took a very active part in the measurement
of a degree of latitude, afterwards in the length of a pen-
dulum vibrating seconds in the latitude of London, and
in the comparison of the British standards with the linear
measure adopted in France. A Committee was appointed
to compare the Society's standard yard with that of the
Exchequer. Later, in 1834, when the standard yard was
lost in the destruction by fire of the Houses of Parliament,
a Commission (all the members of which were Fellows of
the Royal Society) was appointed to consider the steps
to be taken for the restoration of the standards.

It was at the instance of the Council of the Society,
who petitioned George in. for the necessary funds, that
the King gave his consent to a geodetical survey in 1784,
with the immediate object of establishing a trigonometrical
connection between the Observatories of Greenwich and
Paris. The work, under General Roy, for which the

Copley Medal was awarded to him, served as a basis for

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

the operations of a more extensive nature, embracing a
survey of the British Islands, which were commenced
in 1791.

Since its foundation the Society has taken an active
part in many important expeditions for scientific and
geographical exploration, and for magnetical and astro-
nomical observations, — in some cases taking the initiative
by memorialising the Government for the necessary
assistance by grants of money, the use of ships, or other-
wise. Among these may be mentioned the expeditions
sent out for the observation of the transits of Venus in

1761 and in 1769.

The importance of Antarctic exploration, for which
the recent National Expedition has been promoted
jointly with the Royal Geographical Society, was fully
understood by the Royal Society nearly a century and a
half ago. In 1771 an expedition having for its principal
object the exploring of high southern latitudes, with the
view of ascertaining the existence of a great Antarctic
Continent, was strongly and successfully urged on the
Government by the Society. The expedition under
Captain Cook sailed the following year. On its return
three years later, after having circumnavigated the globe,
the Copley Medal was awarded to Captain Cook for the
means he had taken to preserve the health of his crew.

In 1817 a letter was addressed by Sir Joseph Banks,
on the part of the Council, to Lord Melville, urging that

an expedition of discovery should be sent out for determin-

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

ing the practicability of a North- West Passage. The Lords
of the Admiralty gave orders for the fitting out of four
vessels, and invited detailed instructions from the Royal
Society for the guidance of the officers. The Council
recommended Colonel, then Captain, Sabine to proceed
with the North-West Expedition, and Mr. Fisher to
accompany the Polar one. The expedition failed to
procure geographical results of importance, but it was far
from fruitless, for the magnetical observations brought
back by Sabine were an addition of real value to physical
science.

This expedition was followed by another two years
later under Parry, which resulted in the discovery of the
Strait called after Barrow, then Secretary to the Admiralty.

A later Polar Expedition, under Captains Parry and
Ross in 1827, was promoted by the Royal Society, and
brought home valuable magnetical observations, which
were printed in the Society's Transactions.

At home, it was through the Society's influence that
Dr. Maskelyrie, the Astronomer Royal, was able to make
observations in Scotland for the purpose of deducing the
density of the earth. Dr. Hutton undertook the laborious
task of working up the data, the whole expenses being
borne by the Society.

These few examples, inadequate as they are, must
suffice on this occasion to remind us of the many labours
during two centuries and a half undertaken by the Society

for the public good. I pass now at once to some of the

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

many objects of public concern which are at the
present time either directly promoted or assisted by the
Society.

The establishment in this country of a National
Physical Laboratory, for the purpose of bringing scientific
knowledge to bear practically upon the industries and
commerce of the nation, was due in no small measure
to the action of the Society, and has certainly thrown
upon it much additional permanent responsibility. The
necessity for such an Institution in this country, which
was clearly shown by the marked influence of a similar
Institution on the improvement of technical science and
the manufacturing interests of Germany, had been already
strongly advocated by individual Fellows, — in particular,
by Sir Oliver Lodge at Cardiff in 1891, and Sir Douglas
Galton at Ipswich five years later ; but the first practical
step towards its realisation was taken by the Council in
1896, when they decided that the Royal Society should
join the British Association and other kindred Societies
in a Joint Committee, under the Chairmanship of the
President of the Royal Society, to take such action as
they find desirable.

In the following year this Committee waited upon
Lord Salisbury, who was then Prime Minister, and as a
result a Treasury Committee was appointed by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, with Lord Rayleigh as
Chairman, to consider the desirability of establishing a

National Laboratory. That Committee, after hearing

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

witnesses and visiting Germany, reported strongly and
unanimously in favour of such a national Institution.
In 1898 a communication was received from the Treasury
expressing '' the hope that the Royal Society will be
willing to add to the already great services rendered by
them to the Government and public of the United Kingdom,
by consenting to undertake the new responsibilities now
sought to be imposed upon them " in connection with
the new Institution. The Council accepted the important
trust, under which the " ultimate control of the Institution
is vested in the President and Council of the Royal Society,
who in the exercise thereof may issue from time to time
such directions as they may think fit to the General Board
and Executive Committee." The income and all other
property is vested in the Royal Society for the purposes
of the Institution. The Laboratory, which was formally
opened by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales in March 1902,
has already made remarkable progress under its energetic
Director. During the present year the attention of the
Prime Minister has been called to the very great importance
to the national industries of an immediate grant for new
buildings and a more adequate instrumental equipment,
and of a larger annual endowment.

It is not too much to say that men of science of all
countries are under no small obligation to the Royal
Society for their Catalogue of Scientific Papers which
have appeared in all parts of the world since the beginning

of the last century. This great work, to which immense

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

labour has been given gratuitously and without stint by
Fellows during the past forty years, will be carried down
to the close of the century, and will consist of two parts :
an Authors' Catalogue, and a Catalogue of Subjects.
Encouraged by a donation from Mr. Andrew Carnegie,
and the noble liberality of Dr. Ludwig Mond and other
Fellows, the Council decided to proceed with the com-
pletion of the Catalogue, in the hope of further donations
from Fellows and others as the work advances.

It was obvious that to continue permanently to prepare
and publish catalogues of the rapidly increasing output
of scientific literature would be wholly beyond the means
of any one Society, and was an undertaking so vast as to
require organised international co-operation for success. In
1893, a letter, signed by seventeen Fellows, was addressed
to the President, asking that steps might be taken to
provide for the continuation of the Society's Catalogue
from the beginning of the century by adequate international
co-operation. A Committee was appointed, which reported
in favour of an international conference on the subject.
Three conferences were held successively in 1896, 1898,
and 1900. It is scarcely possible to convey an adequate
conception of the arduous and prolonged labours of these
conferences, and of the numerous meetings of committees
held in connection with them. The Society may well
feel great satisfaction that a work of such magnitude, and
of so great moment to all scientfic workers, which was

initiated by itself, was taken up with such remarkable

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

accord by the scientific world. The organisation consists
mainly of a Central Bureau in London under the Royal
Society, in connection with Regional Bureaus, established
in thirty countries for collecting material in the form of
catalogue slips, and transmitting them to the Central
Bureau. The Royal Society has taken upon itself prac-
tically the financial responsibility of the undertaking,
making contracts in its own name with a printer and a
publisher, the latter undertaking the technical duties as
agent for the Society, which is its own publisher. The
first year's issue of the Catalogue has appeared, dealing
in twenty-one volumes with the seventeen sciences decided
upon by the Conference.

The International Association of Academies, the realisa-
tion for the first time of the great scientific idea of a Uni-
versal Academy, open without restriction of language or
of country to every nation under heaven, owes its establish-
ment to the initiative of the Royal Society. In 1897
the Royal Society was invited to send representatives to a
Conference of a Union of German Academies and Societies
which met from time to time. The Society sent delegates,
but declared that the Society's permanent adhesion to any
such association must be conditional on its being made
truly international in character. The principle of an
international association of learned Societies suggested
by the Royal Society was accepted, and a conference was
held at Wiesbaden in 1899 for the purpose of taking steps

for the formation of such an association. Statutes were

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

drawn up and arrangements made for the holding of the
first General Assembly in Paris in 1901.

The primary objects of the Association are the initiation
and promotion of scientific undertakings of general interest
and of universal concern to mankind, especially of such
matters as are outside the power of a single Academy, and
require for their promotion the assistance of the Govern-
ments represented by the Association. Indirectly, by its
triennial General Assemblies in different countries, it should
become an instrument of no mean power for the promotion
of the brotherhood of mankind, and for hastening the day

"When the war drums throb no longer, and the battle flags are

furl'd,
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world."

The Association, as now constituted, consists of twenty
Academies and learned Societies of Europe and America.
The second General Assembly of the Association was held
this year in London under the auspices of the Royal
Society, which, as directing Academy, had had general
charge of the conduct of its business during the last three
years. The Section of Letters met under the direction of
the newly founded British Academy.

The Society has accepted heavy responsibilities at the
instance of the Government in respect of the control of
scientific observations and research in our vast Indian
Empire. In 1899 the India Office inquired whether the
Royal Society would be willing to meet the wishes of the

Indian Government by exercising a general control over the

SIR HANS SLOANE, P.R.S.

BY SIR C. KSELLEK

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

scientific researches which it might be thought desirable
to institute in that country. A standing Committee was
appointed in consequence by the Council, for the purpose
of giving advice on matters connected with scientific
inquiry, probably mainly biological, in India, which should
be supplementary to the Standing Observatories Com-
mittee, which was already established at the request of the
Government as an advisory body on astronomical, solar,
magnetic, and meteorological observations in that part
of the Empire.

An investigation, onerous indeed, but of the highest
scientific interest and of very great practical importance,
has been carried on by a series of Committees, successively
appointed at the request of the Government, for the con-
sideration of some of the strangely mysterious and deadly
diseases of tropical countries. In_i8^^aCommittee was
appointed at the request of the Colonial Secretary, to
investigate the subject of the Tsetse Fly disease in South
Africa. Two years later, Mr. Chamberlain, Secretary of
State for the Colonies, requested the Society to appoint
a Committee to make a thorough investigation into the
origin, the transmission, and the possible preventives and
remedies of tropical diseases, and especially of the malarial
and " Blackwater " fevers prevalent in Africa, promising
assistance, both on the part of the Colonial Office and
of the Colonies concerned. A Committee was appointed,
and under its auspices skilled investigators were sent out

to Africa and to India. In the case of the third Com-
F 81

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

mittee the Society itself took the initiative. An outbreak
in Uganda of the disease, appalling in its inexorable deadli-
ness, known as " Sleeping Sickness/' having been brought
to the knowledge of the Society, a deputation waited upon
Lord Lansdowne at the Foreign Office, asking him to con-
sider favourably the despatch of a small Commission to
Uganda to investigate the disease. He gave his approval,
and a Commission of three experts, appointed on the
recommendation of the Committee, was sent out to Uganda,
£600 being voted out of the Government grant towards the
expenses of the Commission.

The investigations in tropical diseases, promoted and
directed by these Committees, have largely increased our
knowledge of the true nature of these diseases, and, what is
of the highest practical importance, they have shown that
their propagation depends upon conditions which it is in
the power of man so far to modify, or guard against, as to
afford a reasonable expectation that it may be possible for
Europeans to live and carry on their work in parts of the
earth where hitherto the sacrifice of health, and even of
life, has been fearfully great. A general summary of the
work already done on Malaria, especially in regard to its
prevention, and also on the nature of " Blackwater " Fever,
has been published in a parliamentary paper, which records
Mr. Chamberlain's acknowledgment to the Royal Society
for its co-operation in the work undertaken by the Colonial
Office. Our Reports on Sleeping Sickness up to this time

form four parts of a separate publication giving evidence in

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

support of the view that this deadly disease is caused by
the entrance into the blood, and thence into the cerebro-
spinal fluid, of a species of Trypanosoma, and that these
organisms are transmitted from the sick to the healthy by
a kind of tsetse fly, and by it alone ; — Sleeping Sickness is,
in short, a human tsetse fly disease.

In 1897 the Council was requested to assist the Board
of Trade in drawing up Schedules for the establishment of
the relations between the Metric and the Imperial Units
of Weights and Measures. A Committee was appointed,
which, after devoting much time and attention to the
matter, drew up Schedules which were accepted by the
Board of Trade and incorporated in the Orders of Council.

A Coral Reef Committee has been in active existence for
some years, and has directed the attempts to pierce, by
boring, the atoll of Funafuti, towards the expenses of which
grants have been made by the Council. The results of the
work have appeared in a large volume, giving a description
of the whole core from the points of view of the naturalist
and the chemist ; and a list, with critical remarks, of the
species of animals and plants collected.

Soon after the reports were received of the appalling
volcanic eruptions and the loss of life which took place in
the West Indies in 1902, the Council received a letter from
Mr. Chamberlain to ask if the Society would be willing
to undertake an investigation of the phenomena connected
with the eruptions. The Council, considering that such

an investigation fell well within the scope of the objects of

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

the Society, organised a small Commission of two experts,
who left England for the scene of the eruption eleven days
only after the receipt of Mr. Chamberlain's letter ; the
expenses being met by a grant of £300 from the Govern-
ment Grant Committee. Six weeks were spent in the
Islands, including Martinique, by the Commission, which
was successful in securing results of great scientific interest.
A preliminary report was published at the time, and a full
report has since appeared in the Transactions.

Time forbids me to do more than mention the successive
expeditions sent out by the Society, conjointly with the
Royal Astronomical Society, for the observation of total
solar eclipses ; and the onerous work thrown upon the
Society for several years in connection with the National
Antarctic Expedition, undertaken jointly with the Royal
Geographical Society, which has this year returned home
crowned with success as regards the latter ; but the Society's
labours are not at an end, for the prolonged and responsible
task of the discussion and publication of the scientific
results of the Expedition is still before them.

In addition to the numerous undertakings, of which
some examples have been given, in which the influence
and work of the Society have been exercised for national
or public objects, there are a number of other ways in
which the Society makes its influence continually felt
and of which the responsibilities are always with it. The
Society is represented by the President, as an ex-officio

elector, in the election of eight scientific Professorships

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

at the Oxford University, andjone_ Professorship at Cam-
bridge. The President is also ex-officio a trustee of the
British Museum, and of the Hunterian Museum, and a
Governor of the City and Guilds of London Institute.
The Society has a voice, through a representative Fellow
chosen by the Council, on the governing bodies of the
Imperial Institute, the Lister Institute of Preventive
Medicine, Sir John Sloane's Museum, Eton, Rugby, Harrow,
Winchester, and four other public schools, and the Advisory

^^ i — >

Board for Military Education. The Council of the Society
are electors of four members of Lawes' Agricultural Trust,

»-• •/

and are nominators of the members of the Meteorological
Council. The Society is represented by the President
and six of the Visitors on the Board of the Greenwich
Observatory. One of the four sets of copies of the Stan-
dard Weights and Measures is held in custody by the
Society. There is also a Committee for systematic work
in Seismology.

To the Royal Society is entrusted the responsible task
of administrating the annual Government Grant of £4000
for the purpose of scientific research, and a grant of £1000
in aid of the publication of scientific papers.

In addition to these permanent responsibilities, which
are always with the Society, its advice and aid are sought
from time to time both by the Government and by Scientific
Institutions at home and abroad, in favour of independent
objects of a more or less temporary character, of which,

as examples, may be taken the recent action of the Society

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

for the purpose of obtaining Government aid for the con-
tinuation through Egypt of the African Arc of Meridian,
and for the intervention of the Government to assist in
securing the fulfilment of the part undertaken by Great
Britain in the International Astrographic Catalogue and
Chart.

Upon the present Fellows falls the glorious inheritance
of unbounded free labour ungrudgingly given during two
centuries and a half for the public service, as well as of the
strenuous prosecution at the same time of the primary
object of the Society, as set forth in the words of the
Charters : " The promotion of Natural Knowledge." The
successive generations of Fellows have unsparingly con-
tributed of their time to the introduction and promotion,
whenever the opportunity was afforded them, of scientific
knowledge and methods into the management of public
concerns by Departments of the Government. The financial
independence of the Royal Society, neither receiving nor
wishing to accept State aid for its own private purposes,
has enabled the Society to give advice and assistance
which, both with the Government and with Parliament,
have the weight and finality of a wholly disinterested
opinion. I may quote here the words of a recent letter
from H.M. Treasury : ' Their Lordships have deemed
themselves in the past very fortunate in being able to rely,
in dealing with scientific questions, upon the aid of the
Royal Society, which commands not only the confidence

of the scientific world, but also of Parliament."

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

In the past the Royal Society has been not infrequently
greatly hampered in giving its advice, by the knowledge
that the funds absolutely needed for the carrying out of
the matters in question in accordance with our present
scientific knowledge would not be forthcoming. Though
I am now speaking on my own responsibility, I am sure
that the Society is with me if I say that the expenditure
by the Government on scientific research and scientific
institutions, on which its commercial and industrial pro-
sperity so largely depend, is wholly inadequate in view
of the present state of international competition. I throw
no blame on the individual members of the present or
former Governments ; they are necessarily the represent-
atives of public opinion, and cannot go beyond it. The
cause is deeper, — it lies in the absence in the leaders of
public opinion, and indeed throughout the more influential
classes of society, of a sufficiently intelligent appreciation
of the supreme importance of scientific knowledge and
scientific methods in all industrial enterprises, and indeed
in all national undertakings. The evidence of this grave
state of the public mind is strikingly shown by the very
small response that follows any appeal that is made for
scientific objects in this country, in contrast with the
large donations and liberal endowments from private
benefaction for scientific purposes and scientific institutions
which are always at once forthcoming in the United States.
In my opinion, the scientific deadness of the nation is

mainly due to the too exclusively mediaeval and classical

methods of our higher public schools, and can only be
slowly removed by making in future the teaching of science,
not from text-books for passing an examination, but, as
far as may be possible, from the study of the phenomena
of Nature by direct observation and experiment, an integral
and essential part of all education in this country.

[The Royal Society is an institution which has not
only devoted itself to the prosecution of pure science, and
has encouraged and helped on the application of science
to national undertakings, but has raised the standard
of thought and of living of the nation. With the growth
of the Society since its foundation, how greatly have the
thoughts of men been widened by the process of the suns.
The fairy-tales of science, now so familiar, make us the
more eager for the further progress which the coming
years shall bring, especially for more knowledge of the
relation of the phenomena of Nature to ourselves, and for a
wider philosophy in the light of which the domains of the
living and of the non-living shall be seen to lose themselves
in a common realm of harmony and light ; in a word,
for the coming vision of the world and all the wonder that
shall be. For wonder is a fruit of natural knowledge as
well as its root. Alas ! for us creatures of a moment-
science moves slowly, creeping on from point to point.
Still, at no time in the past has the pace of scientific progress
been so rapid ; at no time so imminent the clearing away
of the mist of the unknown from many points of strategic
importance for the conquest of more knowledge of the

r.l.N.I \\1IN FRANKLIN, F.R.S.

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

inner relations of things. On one central eminence, domin-
ating alike the past, the present, and the future, science
has for some years firmly entrenched herself — the position
that through all the ages the cosmos has advanced, and
is still advancing, by a process of orderly evolution. In
the domain of the living the fact of progress by means of
evolution was finally established by our illustrious country-
men Darwin, and his prophet Huxley. In heredity and
variation, the great discovery of Mendel, in the hands
of one of our medallists of to-day, promises to bring the
biologist nearer to his main quest, the fundamental nature
of living things. In physics, only a few years ago Professor
J. J. Thomson took by storm the outworks of the central
citadel of Nature — the chemical atom. His later brilliant
attacks, aided by the new artillery of radio-active radiations,
may be said to have carried the keep itself. This strong-
hold of matter was found to be a place of positive electrifi-
cation in which swarms of negative electrons are winging
their mazy rounds. Material mass gives place to the
electric mass of moving electric charges. On this view
the chemical elements, each with its individual properties,
but all falling into family groups according to a periodic
law, have their origin in differences in the number of the
electrons and in the figures of their giddy dances, whirling
within the atom. Material nature becomes simplified
into electricity and ether — or, is it only ether ? Passing
from the atom to the heavens, within the memory of those

living, science has taught us so to read sunbeams and star-

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE STATE

beams as to enable us to apply the methods of the labor-
atory to the heavenly bodies. By means of their radiations
alone we discuss their chemical constitution and their
orbital and other motions, which were before unknowable.
By each discovery the vision of the world has become more
glorious, the wonder of it more amazing, while chambers
and palaces of Nature still unexplored remain the exhaust-
less heritage of all coming generations. Are our theories
more than artificial conceptions, mental pictures co-
ordinating a large range of facts and guiding us to new
facts ? Have we approached even within telescopic view
of the reality of things ? What sustains the uniformity of
Nature ? What is behind the obvious trend and direction
of development of the cosmos ? Was there a beginning ?
Will there be an end ? Or, do

"The torrents of her myriad universe
Fly on to clash together again, and make
Another and another frame of things
For ever" ?

Science is silent ; but with eyes aflame looks forward to
the coming day

"When light shall spread . . .
Thro' all the seasons of the golden year."]

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Rr>^E^®i ^-A^l4^sU«rf4fSW€TWwi^l«?

IV. ON THE PROFOUND INFLUENCE
WHICH SCIENCE, REPRESENTED
BY THE ROYAL SOCIETY, HAS HAD
UPON THE LIFE AND THOUGHT OF
THE WORLD; AND THE PLACE OF
SCIENCE IN GENERAL EDUCATION.

"Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times." — ISAIAH
xxxiii. 6.

"What is put into the schools of a country comes out subsequently in
the manhood of the nation." — STEIN.

From the Address delivered at the Anniversary Meeting
on November 30, 1905.

AT the last anniversary I occupied a few minutes
in bringing to your remembrance some of the
more important occasions on which the Society in
the past had initiated, supported, or given advice about
scientific questions in connection with the State ; and, at
the same time, I called attention to the large number of
responsible public duties which to-day rest permanently
upon it, and by which, either through departments of the
State or through other public bodies, the Society makes
its influence felt strongly for the good of the country.

To-day I wish to speak of the profound influence which

the discoveries of science, in great part the work of Fellows

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

of this Society, have had upon the general life and thought
of the world, especially during the last fifty years.

The untold material benefits which science has conferred
upon civilised mankind are too familiar to need mention ;
they are always with us, from the world's news upon our
breakfast table to our sun-bright evenings. There are,
however, other benefits more subtle and less obvious, but
not less real and certainly not of less price — the wider
range of thought and the greater intellectual freedom which
have followed upon modern scientific discovery.

I am justified, surely, in saying that the average way
of thinking on all subjects has been as much altered and
elevated by the researches and writings of men of science,
as have been the common conditions of living. The
contrast in what and how we think to-day, as compared
with the day on which the Society received its Charter,
in 1662, is as great as it is in how we live and travel.

The changes which have taken place in the scope and
mode of national thought, especially during the last fifty
years, have been brought about mainly in two ways :
by a breaking down of inherited prejudices and of tradi-
tional opinions through the results of scientific discovery ;
and secondly, by the freer and more direct methods of
thinking which have followed from the experimental study
of Nature.

The Royal Society was itself a chief practical outcome
of a new spirit, which, during the generation preceding its

foundation, had arisen at Oxford and elsewhere, and was

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

stirring into life the dry bones of a rigid and antiquated
philosophy. Scholasticism, already in decay, was slowly
losing its hold upon the more active minds, who refused
to accept any longer as final the traditional hypotheses
and syllogistic methods of the schools in the interpreta-
tion of natural phenomena. There was growing slowly a
conviction of the necessity, in the study of Nature, of an
appeal to Nature herself by means of direct experiment.

Of the great men who had come into this state of mental
unrest, the most original and creative was Francis Bacon,
who, by the unequalled power and eloquence with which
he summed up and put into a connected system the new
ideas which were in the air, gave so great an impulse to the
newer mode of thinking, as rightly to have received the
name of the " Father of experimental philosophy." His
immediate success was due, however, in no small part,
to the circumstance that the time was ripe for the great
changes in the way of studying Nature, which in his
writings he so powerfully expounded and enforced.

I must pause for a moment to say how very unfortunate
in this respect was the lot of his great, if not greater,
namesake, Roger Bacon, the " Doctor Mirabilis," as he
was properly named, who, born out of due time, exerted
but little influence on contemporary thought.

Let us not forget that it was Roger Bacon who, 300
years before the time of " large-browed Verulam," saw
clearly that the study of Nature could only be successfully

prosecuted and advanced by means of experimental

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

research, and so gave it the highest place as Domina
omnium scientiarum. The reasons which he gave for his
exaltation of experiment might have been written yester-
day, so modern is his standpoint. " Experimental science/'
he says, " has three great prerogatives over all other
sciences : it verifies their conclusions by direct experiment ;
it discovers truths which they could never reach ; and it
investigates the secrets of nature, and opens to us a know-
ledge of the past and of the future."

To return to Francis Bacon : his philosophy was summed
up in the words Imperium hominis, the great destiny of
man as the ruler of Nature ; and he saw that man's rightful
sovereignty over Nature could only be attained through
the slow and laborious acquirement of a true understanding
of Nature. Bacon looked upon Nature as an overwhelm-
ingly complex congeries of phenomena; and as a filum
labyrinthi by which man might slowly find his way through
its mysteries to all knowledge, he put forward and ex-
pounded in the Novum Organum his new method, spes
est una in inductione vera.

It must not be forgotten that Bacon's induction is
something more than the traditional induction of the
logicians, and practically became a new method, since
it includes the elimination of the non-essential. It is no
disparagement of the great and revolutionary work of
Bacon to acknowledge that the discoveries of science during
the last two centuries and a half have not been won by

an exclusive following of his method. For example, he

JOHN DALTON, F.R.S.

DY B. R. FAULKNER

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

assigns no proper place to the use of the trained imagina-
tion in scientific experiment, though, indeed, he speaks of
the procedure from one experiment to another as an art,
or a learned sagacity. Further, there is in his system
no sufficient appreciation of the deductive method of
reasoning.

On these grounds questionings have made themselves
heard, and in some quarters rather loudly, whether Francis
Bacon has a right to the high position usually accorded to
him in the history of experimental science. We shall
probably not go far wrong if we allow ourselves to be
guided by the views of Bacon taken by his immediate
intellectual successors, the great men, Boyle, Evelyn, and
others, who had the chief part in founding the Royal
Society. We find them reflected in the Ode to the Royal
Society, composed, at the instance of Evelyn, by the con-
temporary poet Cowley. He likens Bacon to a modern
Moses, who led the chosen people to the promised land of
knowledge of Nature, though he himself did not enter, and
only viewed it imperfectly from afar. The fine engraving
by Hollar which forms the frontispiece to the large paper
edition of Spratt's History of the Royal Society, published in
1667, the design of which was furnished by Evelyn, con-
tains two principal figures : the first President of the Society,
Lord Brouncker, is on one side of the bust of the Royal
Founder, and on the other is Bacon with the title of Artium
Instaurator.

[Surely no one of the founders of the Society would have

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

been bold enough to forecast the marvellous " improve-
ment of natural knowledge " which, under the influence of
the Society, has been won by methods of experiment and
induction. To some of the founders would have been
not less surprising the conditions under which this great
work has been accomplished. The master minds of that
age were more or less under the influence of the ideas repre-
sented by the monastery and the cell — that is to say, an
Academy in which the Fellows live apart from common
life, and are secluded from its cares and interests. We find
these ideas in Bacon's Solomon's House, in his classical
fable of the New Atlantis ; even more strongly in the
generous plan for a scientific college submitted to Boyle
by the noble-hearted Evelyn, and in Cowley's proposition
for a college of experimental philosophy. Now the great
work of the Society has been done, not in the seclusion of
an Academy, but, so to speak, in the world. The Fellows
have not been supported in a learned leisure by the Society,
but taking their full part in the work of the world, of their
own substance maintained the Society. Under these
circumstances, there was no need to limit the number of
Fellows to the 27 fathers of Solomon's House, or to Cowley's
20 philosophers. The Society's 450 Fellows, all taking their
part in the common life of the nation, are a great power,
each Fellow acting upon the men around him, and so the
Society, like a leaven, imbuing the mind of the people with
the vivifying ferment of natural knowledge. And I think

that upon the Fellows themselves, the living in constant

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

touch with the needs and activities of common life may
well act as a stimulus to that alertness of mind which is
most favourable to scientific progress and discovery. Still,
after all, in principle the older men were in the right, for
the idea underlying the academic grove and the cloister,
and for which these external conditions of life were then
considered necessary — namely, simplicity of living and
absolute devotion to the pure quest of truth, unswayed by
the glittering tinsel of social distinction and success — are
precisely those conditions of being which find access to
Nature's most secret places. Surely a man who is able to
devote himself to the study of Nature has as good a position
as the world is able to confer. The Society has never
before stood so high as at the present time with regard to
its scientific activity, and to the number and quality of the
papers published in its Proceedings and Transactions.]

If the methods and discoveries of science can exert
the large influence on general thought which I have claimed
for them, some explanation may be needed of the great
slowness of any incoming, to an appreciable extent, of a
wider and freer spirit during the first centuries of the
Royal Society's existence. Two hundred years went
slowly by without any very marked change in this respect
showing itself in the intellectual attitude of the people.
The public mind, on all questions which have to do with
man's position in relation to Nature, still slumbered on
under the narcotic influence of traditions which were re-
garded as too sacred to be open to discussion. Still,
G 97

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

during these 200 years the leaven of the open mind of
scientific research was silently at work, for each true student
'of Nature became, among those about him, the source of a
new and living influence. The fact was that, during all
that time, there was no real mental contact, no true under-
standing, between the man of science and the average
man of education. The mind trained to receive without
questioning the teaching of traditional authority, and the
mind eager to find out new truth in the spirit of the Society's
motto, Nullius in verba, had little in common ; they were
often even mutually repellant. It could hardly be other-
wise ; there was no popular scientific press, and in the halls
of the schools the drone of monotonous repetitions from
memory of knowledge sanctioned by authority was never
broken in upon by the jubilant eurekas of experiments,
however simple, or of individual observation of Nature.

What in the intellectual world would correspond to a
thunderbolt or an earthquake was needed to awaken and
transform the slumbering age — and it came. In the early
years of Queen Victoria's reign the accumulated tension
of scientific progress burst upon the mind, not only of the
nation, but of the whole intelligent world, with a suddenness
and an overwhelming force for which the strongest material
metaphors are poor and inadequate. Twice the bolt fell, and
twice, in a way to which history furnishes no parallel, the
opinions of mankind may be said to have been changed in
a day. Changed, not on some minor points standing alone,
but each time on a fundamental position which, like a key-

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

stone, brought down with it an arch of connected beliefs
resting on long-cherished ideas and prejudices. What took
place was not merely the acceptance by mankind of new
opinions, but complete inversions of former beliefs involving
the rejection of views which had grown sacred by long
inheritance.

I need scarcely say that I am speaking of two scientific
discoveries, following each other at no great interval of ^^

time about the middle of the last century, and both due /

mainly to the work of Fellows of the Society. The first

J J

Msfrw&J

discovery was the evidence from geology for the great

antiquity of the earth, as opposed to the all but universal
belief of the time, and then evidence for the great age of
man. The second discovery, of a not less revolutionary
import, was the doctrine of organic evolution by the
principle of natural selection, which brought about a
complete change of opinion as to the position of man him-
self in relation to Nature.

If I speak strongly, it is because I lived through that
period, and my recollections are still vivid of the fierce fury
of the storm of opposition with which both these innova-
tions of thought were at first assailed. It seems to me
that these signal victories of new knowledge, gained by
experimental methods of research over views in which for
generations men's minds had been fast riveted by tradition
and authority, placed natural science, for the first time, in
its true position, as within its own sphere the absolute

authority to which all must bow. Up to that time science

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

had been on sufferance ; welcomed, indeed, when it con-
tributed to the supply of man's material needs, as by the
steam engine and the railroad ; dallied with, and sometimes
smiled at, when her conclusions did not clash with what
men had been taught to regard as unassailable truth : but
rejected with scorn, and her prophets vilified with
epithets borrowed from the darkest times of mediaeval
persecution, whenever, in the spirit of the Society's motto,
she dared to utter words which were not in agreement with
inherited beliefs. Then, to some extent, the true position
of natural science was acknowledged, and she came into
her own — the crown and sceptre of authority which are her
right — as, to repeat Roger Bacon's words, Domina omnium
scientiarum.

Ever since that time, notwithstanding cavillings here
and there, of which the echoes are still audible, natural
science has taken a truer place in relation to the general
thought of the age. Her position of supreme authority
has been recognised, and each year strengthened, by the
unbroken series of brilliant discoveries which have dis-
tinguished the last half-century, and which have impressed
themselves so much the more deeply on the public mind
because they have been lavishly accompanied by practical
applications and inventions, which have increased, to an
extent almost beyond words, the power, richness, and
happiness of human life.

This is not the place to discuss in full how fruitful

have been in all directions of human thought, and so

100

THOMAS YOUNC., F.K.S.

BV H. V. BRIGGS, AFTER SIR T. LAWRENCE

for the progress of mankind, the two great revolutions of
opinion of which I have been speaking, especially the
one that came a little later, and will for all time be
associated with the name of Charles Darwin, of which the
innate vitality is so great that it has already grown into a
great tree of knowledge bearing all manner of fruit. It
is indeed true that before Darwin the idea of a continuous
development, alike in the physical and biological worlds,
had formed the basis of speculations in many quarters ;
but this conception, being contrary to current belief,
had left no impression on the general mind. It was not
until Darwin's works appeared that the new evidence was
perceived to be overwhelming in favour of the view that
man is not an independent being standing alone, but
is the outcome of a general and orderly evolution. It
follows from this view, that the principle of evolution
must henceforth take a guiding place in the consideration
of all problems relating to man, to the history of his funda-
mental convictions and opinions, as well as to all social
and economic questions of the present and of the future.

To the open eye all the world is indeed a stage, the
boards themselves having been laid by an earlier evolution,
on which, through ages, the drama of the orderly evolu-
tion of living things has been going on. Through the
revelations of palaeontology we can, in imagination, become
spectators of the scenes of the earlier acts of the slow
progress of events leading up to the entrance upon the

stage of man himself. Then in archaeology and history,

101

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

as in magic mirrors, we can see re-acted the early scenes
of the final act (which is still in progress), in which man
plays the principal part. The strident brass was softened
when Nature's orchestra modulated into the melodic and
more joyous leit-motiv heralding the coming on of man.
In the later scenes, Intelligence has come on to take the
leading part hitherto played by Brute Force, and man
has brought with him into the drama the new characters
of Pity, Mercy, and Charity.

Henceforth the dominant power in the world is brain,
controlled by the emotions of the heart ; and the highly
trained intelligence the chief factor of success in all de-
partments of individual and national enterprise.

One of the most important and fruitful results of the
intellectual upheaval which followed upon the two great
discoveries of science, of which we have been speaking,
is the almost unlimited freedom of personal belief which we
enjoy to-day. The older Fellows, who, like myself, lived
through that eventful time, will not have forgotten the
narrow and bigoted spirit which then prevailed. Though
without the name, and unsupported by the terrors of
rack and stake, in fact and in deed an inquisition was
still in power. The reproach of heresy was freely used,
and those who dared to think for themselves, and exercising
their private judgment to swerve from the current opinions
sanctioned by antiquity, were made to feel how heavy
could be the social penalties enforced by the spirit of

persecution.

102

Experimental science came as the liberator of men's
minds, setting free from the prison-house of conventional
beliefs the spirits which had been lying for generations in
the bonds of the dogmas of past ages. Slowly men came
to acknowledge that the arbitrary authority of names,
and of systems of belief however greatly venerated, must
give way when science speaks with the reasonable authority
of experiment and observation. This new form of
authority, to which men were coming to yield an unquestion-
ing obedience, unlike the dogmatic teachers at whose feet
they had sat, does not claim finality for its opinions. It
is the distinctive glory of experimental science that it
is for ever seeking further truth in all directions, and is
always ready to change its opinions into agreement with
the newest knowledge, whithersoever it may lead, which
it is able to wrest from Nature by experiment. There
are many striking recent examples, of which I will mention
only the unexpected phenomena of radio-activity, and
the acute earnestness of the biologist of to-day in his quest
after the fundamental nature and scope of living things.

In this way, during the last half-century, under the
freer conditions of general thought introduced by natural
science, men gradually became accustomed to wide differ-
ences of personal opinion, and so no longer feared them ;
there arose slowly the spirit of modern toleration and the
recognition of the right of every man to judge for himself
on all matters of opinion, — that is, to allow himself to be

guided by his reason, which demands sufficient evidence

103

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

for belief. Already a remarkable change in the way of
looking at things in all departments of thought has been
brought about. To an extent before unknown, each man
now thinks for himself, and is no longer content to accept
sluggishly the current beliefs of his time, but seeks to
bring all things to the touchstone of experiment and
experience.

Perhaps I am speaking a little prematurely, and paint-
ing the present under the illumination of the golden
radiance of the dawn of a still freer future, for even to-
day we are reminded in the press, from time to time, that
the spirit of persecution is not yet dead.

Another direction in which, during the last half-century,
the public mind has been powerfully influenced by the
discoveries and the methods of science, is in a change of
attitude, in all matters of opinion, towards truth, by
putting truth for her own sake in the first place as its
main quest.

I do not for a moment suggest that consciously the
desire for truth does not take the first place in all honest
hearts. All the other great departments of human in-
terests, however, as politics, economics, theology, and
philosophy, are broken up into sharply divided schools
of thought, of which the differences of opinion are accen-
tuated by the jealousies and the intolerance of party
feeling. In the great majority of cases, men find them-
selves by the lot of birth and early education among the

adherents of one or other party, and nearly always come

104

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

unconsciously to identify the issues of that particular
party with truth itself. With the most honest intentions
on the part of the speakers, the reasoning which is heard
in Parliament, or from public platforms, is almost always
one-sided from the warping influence of party ties and
issues.

In direct opposition to this narrowness of thought,
which views all subjects through the distorting mirage of
party prejudice, stands the absolute freedom of mind of
the man of science, who knows, or ought to know, nothing
of party, and stands with open arms to welcome truth in
however strange or unexpected guise she may present
herself. In his writings the man of science has no lower
aim than the diffusion of truth so far as it is known, and
no desire to make converts to any opinion or party. As
opposed to the finality of party opinions, he proclaims
that truth is but very partially attained by man on any
subject, for we can see truth only imperfectly, as she
appears altered by the perspective of our own standpoint.
The scientific attitude of mind is no less than antipodal
to that of the ordinary party man, wrangling for his own
particular shibboleth.

Following upon greater freedom of private opinion, and
the desire for truth rather than for party success, has
grown up the greater fearlessness in suggestion, and in
the acceptance of new views, which is undoubtedly
characteristic of the present age, and stands in strong

contrast to the conventional timidity of half a century

105

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

ago. This fearlessness has been won chiefly through
the widening of human thought by natural knowledge,
by which the prejudices inherent in human nature, or
which have come down by inheritance, have been greatly
weakened, if not yet overcome. The fearless courage
of change of opinion required by experimental science
is safeguarded by the demand which she makes in all
cases for sufficient evidence from observation or experience.

To sum up, the influence of science during the last
fifty years has been in the direction of bringing out and
developing the powers and freedom of the individual,
under the stimulation of great ideas. To become all that
we can become as individuals is our most glorious birth-
right, and only as we realise it do we become, at the same
time, of great price to the community. From individual
minds are born all great discoveries and revolutions of
thought. New ideas may be in the air, and more or less
present in many minds, but it is always an individual
who at the last takes the creative step and enriches man-
kind with the living germ-thought of a new era of opinion.

All influences, therefore, and especially all laws and
institutions which tend to lose the individual in the crowd,
and bring down the exceptional to the level of the average,
are contrary to the irresistible order of nature, and can
lead only to disaster to the individual and to the
State.

I should not omit to mention the marvellous secondary

effects of scientific discoveries upon the mental progress

1 06

SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, P.R.S.

BY SIR T. LAWRENCE

of the civilised world which are being wrought by their
practical applications to the cheapening of paper, and to
improvements of the automatic printing-press, which,
combined with the linking together of all parts of the
earth by a network of telegraphic communications, put
it in the power of even the poor of the realm to read daily
the news of the world, and for a few shillings to provide
themselves with a library of classical works. Of scarcely
less educational influence upon the public mind are the new
methods of photography and mechanical reproduction,
by which pictures of current events and the portraits of
those who are making contemporary history, and also
copies of the world's masterpieces of painting and of
sculpture, are widely disseminated with the cheap news-
papers and magazines among the mass of the people.

I have not spoken of the influence of science upon its
own students, nor of the place it should take in general
education. My purpose has been to point out the pro-
found changes which science has wrought upon the habits
of thinking of the general public, who themselves have no
personal knowledge of science methods, changes which
have revolutionised every activity of the human mind.

Golden will be the days when, through a reform of our
higher education, every man going up to the Universities
will have been from his earliest years under the stimulating
influence of a personal training in practical elementary
science ; all his natural powers being brought to a state

of high efficiency, and his mind actively proving all things

107

SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD

under the vivifying influence of freedom of opinion.
Throughout his days he will be on the best terms with
Nature, living a longer and a fuller life under her pro-
tecting care, and, through the further disclosures of her-
self, rising successively to higher levels of being and of
knowledge.

1 08

SCIENCE IN EDUCATION

AS a corol-
lary to
what I
have said, the
place that science
should take in
general education,
very briefly con-
sidered, will suit-
' ably occupy the
few minutes which
remain. I do not
wish to speak of
science as a
specialised subject
of advanced study,
nor of technical
education, which
is obviously of supreme importance to all who look
forward to finding their life-work in manufacturing and
industrial pursuits, or of entering such professions as
architecture and civil and electrical engineering.

The importance to every man of a practical acquaint-

109

SCIENCE IN EDUCATION

ance with elementary science is obvious. Would it be
thought possible that any nation could act so absurdly
as to teach its children other languages, and leave them
in complete ignorance of the tongue of the land in which
they would have to pass their lives ? Would it not then
be incredible, if it had not become a too familiar fact,
that the public schools have, until recently, excluded all
teaching of the science of Nature from their scheme of
studies, though man's relation to Nature is more intimate
than to his fellow-countrymen ? We live, move, and
have our being in Nature ; we cannot emigrate from it, for
we are part of it. Yet our higher education leaves men,
who in other directions are well informed, much as deaf-
mutes in the presence of Nature. They do not hear her
most imperative warnings, and can only get on haltingly
in their everyday intercourse with the natural forces to
which their lives are subjected, by means of the arbitrary
signs of empirical custom. The recent introduction of
some amount of science teaching into our Higher Schools is
quite inadequate, alike in kind and in degree. It can be
only through a reform of the scheme of their examinations
by the Universities, that we can hope to see science take
the equal part with the humanities in general education,
to which she is entitled.

The place of science in general education may be
considered under two distinct aspects : the intrinsic
value of the teaching of science as a means of enlarging

the powers of the mind ; and secondly, its relative

SCIENCE IN EDUCATION

value and place as compared with the teaching of the
classics.

The elements of the science of Nature, when properly
taught, have a claim to a very high place in early general
education, since Nature is always close about us as a living
intelligence and power, which responds to the questions
put to her by experiment. The young mind finds itself
no longer in the realms of the dead, deciphering from
the inscriptions on their tombstones, the history and
opinions of past generations, invaluable as is such know-
ledge in its proper place, but in the open of light and life
where Nature holds her school, taking all things, great and
small, as the object lessons of her teaching.

Two faculties of the mind which it is of the highest
importance, especially in early youth, to enlarge and
develop by exercise, are wonder and imagination. Under
the ordinary premature language teaching of the Grammar
Schools, even the wonder and imagination natural to
young minds become so stunted in their growth as to
remain more or less dormant throughout life. On the
other hand, natural science brings them into full activity,
and greatly stimulates their development. Nature's
fairy-tales, as read through the microscope, the telescope,
and the spectroscope, or spelt out to us from the blue
by waves of ether, are among the most powerful of the
exciting causes of wonder in its noblest form, when free
from terror it becomes the minister of delight and of mental

stimulation.

SCIENCE IN EDUCATION

And surely the master-creations of poetry, music,
sculpture, and painting, alike in mystery and grandeur,
cannot surpass the natural epics and scenes of the heavens
above and of the earth beneath, in their power of firing
the imagination, which indeed has taken its most daring
and enduring flights under the earlier and simpler condi-
tions of human life, when men lived in closer contact with
Nature, and in greater quiet, free from the deadening
rush of modern society. Of supreme value is the exercise
of the imagination, that lofty faculty of creating and
weaving imagery in the mind, and of giving subjective
reality to its own creations, which is the source of the
initial impulses to human progress and development, to
all inspiration in the arts, and to discovery in science.

Further, elementary science, taught practically with
the aid of experiment during a boy's early years, cannot
fail to develop the faculty of observation. However keen
in vision, the eyes see little without training in observa-
tion by the subtle exercise of the mind behind them.
From the humblest weed to the stars in their courses, all
Nature is a great object lesson for the acquirement of
the power of rapid and accurate noting of minute and
quickly changing aspects. Such an early training in the
simpler methods of scientific observation confers upon
a man for life the possession of an inexhaustible source of
interest and delight, and no mean advantage in the keen
competitions of the intellectual activities of the present

day.

112

SCIENCE IN EDUCATION

Training in the use of the eyes develops, at the same
time, alertness of the intelligence and suppleness of the
mind in dealing with new problems, which in after-life
will be of great value in facing the unforeseen difficulties
of all kinds which are constantly arising.

Science, practically taught, does more ; for, under the
constant control of his inferential conclusions by the
unbending facts of direct experiment, the pupil gradually
acquires the habit of reasoning correctly from the observa-
tions he makes. In particular, he learns the most precious
lesson of great caution in forming his opinions, for he finds
how often reasoning, which appeared to him to be flawless,
was not really so, for it led him to wrong conclusions.
Further, from the constant study of Nature the student
comes so to look at things as almost unconsciously to
discriminate between those which are essential and those
which are only accidental, and so gradually to acquire
the faculty of classing the facts of experience, and of putting
them in their proper places in a consistent system or
theory. Are there any other studies, it may be asked,
by which, in the same time, a young mind could develop
an equally enlarged capacity for correct reasoning, and
acquire so wide an outlook ? Yet, notwithstanding the
immense intrinsic value of its teaching, science is but one
of the studies which are necessary for a wide and liberal
education. Intellectual culture, or, in other words, the
whole mind working at its best, requires, besides the

training of all its powers harmoniously by the study of
H 113

SCIENCE IN EDUCATION

Nature, an acquaintance with many other kinds of know-
ledge, especially of human history and the development
of human thought, and of the human arts. Humanistic
studies and experimental science are equally essential,
and indeed complement each other. Either alone leaves
the mind unequally developed, and its whole attitude
one-sided, and so produces a narrow type of mind which
is incapable of taking a wide view even of its own side of
thought, and has but little sympathy with any subject
outside it.

In the scheme of a liberal education, literature and
languages, which include the habit of clear thinking in
suitable words, should have a large place. It must, I
think, be conceded that the languages of ancient Greece
and Rome, which are highly developed for the conveyance
of delicate shades of thought, still stand unsurpassed as
means of training in thinking in association with correct
expression, while at the same time they feed the mind
with the great ideas and the heroic deeds of the past.

In the methods of study of these languages, as actually
carried out in the public schools, surely great reforms are
possible. The complaint of the classicist, John Milton,
who had been himself a schoolmaster,- in his Tractate on
Education, written about twenty years before the founda-
tion of the Royal Society, is urgently true to-day. He
wrote : " We do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely
in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek

as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in

114

MICHAKL FARADAY, F.R..S.

BY A. BLAIKUiY

SCIENCE IN EDUCATION

one year." Later on, Evelyn made a similar complaint.
" At most schools/' he wrote, " there is a casting away of
six or seven years in the learning of words only, and that,
too, very imperfectly."

Quite recently the number of years usually given to
Latin and Greek in the public schools has been shown by
a striking experiment to be greatly excessive.

Last March the Minister of Education gave an account
in the Prussian Chamber of the so-called " reform schools,"
in which the study of the classics is begun for Latin at
twelve, and for Greek not until the age of fourteen, with
the encouraging result that, of 125 pupils who presented
themselves for the leaving examination, only four failed
to pass, and, of these four, three succeeded three months
later. Experience showed that, as the result of beginning
Latin and Greek at a later age, the interest of the pupils
in their work was much keener, and their progress much
more rapid.

Improved methods of teaching the classical languages
which would permit of the beginning of the study of
them at a later age, would leave ample time for an early
training in experimental science, so welcome to the young
inquiring mind, which must soon come to be recognised as
an essential part of all education.

In future no Grammar or Higher School should be con-
sidered as properly provided for, unless furnished with the
necessary apparatus for teaching experimentally the funda-
mental principles of mechanics, physics, and biology. The

SCIENCE IN EDUCATION

pupils should have the use of a small astronomical tele-
scope, and of microscopes for biological work. Such
apparatus and instruments can now be purchased at a
very small cost.

Clearly, it is only by such a widening of the general
education common to all who go up to the Universities,
before specialisation is allowed, that the present " gap
between scientific students careless of literary form, and
classical students ignorant of scientific method," can be
filled up, and the young men who will in the future take an
active part in public affairs, as statesmen and leaders of
thought, can be suitably prepared to introduce and en-
courage in the country that fuller knowledge and apprecia-
tion of science which are needed for the complete change
of the national attitude on all science questions, which is
absolutely necessary if we are to maintain our high position
and fulfil our destiny as a great nation.

[I do not surely exaggerate the importance to the nation
of the existence of the Royal Society, if I claim for it to
have been, during the last two centuries, the faithful
guardian of the true Palladium of the Empire, too long
neglected and even forgotten by its peoples.

Sciencia vinces, — whether it be on the field of battle,
on the waves of the ocean, amid the din and smoke of the
workshop, or on the broad acres under the light of heaven ;
and assuredly, in the future, even more than in the past, not
only the prosperity, but even the existence of the Empire

will be found to depend upon the " improvement of Natural

116

SCIENCE IN EDUCATION

Knowledge/' — that is, upon the more complete applica-
tion of scientific knowledge and methods to every depart-
ment of industrial and national activity.

It is obvious that it must be so, for it is only through
an increased understanding of what are called the laws
of Nature — the sequence and the interaction of natural
phenomena — that we can hope to bring Nature into com-
plete subjection, and to make use of her illimitable forces
to work out our own ends.]

As I address you now for the last time, I wish to say how
fully I have appreciated the honour — the crowning honour —
which can fall to the lot of but few Fellows, which I have
received at your hands. Most deeply have I felt the great
responsibility associated with this honour, and during a not
uneventful period it has been my most earnest endeavour
to uphold, as far as it lay in my power, the high traditions
of our great and ancient Society.

In bidding you farewell, I desire to express to the entire
body of the Fellows my gratitude for their invariable
consideration and courtesy, and in particular to the Officers
who have served with me, my warm thanks for their efficient
support and assistance, and for the thoughtful and pre-
venient attention by which they have sought to lighten the
duties of my office.

I rejoice that in the hands of my probable successor, a
man of world-wide eminence in science, the interests and
the reputation of the Society will be eminently sale.

Farewell ! Floreat Regalis Societas Londini !

117

APPENDIX

COPY OF LETTER AND ENCLOSURE SENT TO THE
UNIVERSITIES

THE ROYAL SOCIETY,

BURLINGTON HOUSE, LONDON, W.

January 21, 1904.

SIR, — The Address delivered by the President of the Royal
Society (Sir William Huggins) at the anniversary meeting on
December i, 1902, was devoted in part to a consideration of the
defects of the system of Secondary Education in this country, in-
cluding the prevalent absence of initiation into scientific method
and habits of observation. The public interest excited by this
Address has led to urgent application to the Royal Society, from
persons whose opinions carry great weight, that this subject should
not be allowed to drop ; and the Council have, moreover, been
informed that some of those occupying the most responsible positions
with regard to the Public Schools would welcome advice and assist-
ance in this matter from outside. The President and Council of
the Royal Society, after careful consideration, came to the con-
clusion that they would not be justified in entirely declining the
task thus influentially pressed upon them ; and they accordingly
appointed a Special Committee to prepare the subject for detailed
consideration, and especially to suggest a plan for inviting the

active participation of the Universities in the problem of the im-

119

provement of education in Secondary Schools. At the same
time, they adopted the following resolution : —

" That the Universities be respectfully urged to consider
the desirability of taking such steps in respect of their
regulations as will, so far as possible, ensure that a
knowledge of science is recognised in schools and else-
where as an essential part of general education."
The recommendations of this Committee have received further
prolonged consideration. As the result, we have been directed
to submit the resolution quoted above to the Universities of the
United Kingdom, and to express the strong conviction of the
President and Council of the Royal Society that it is in the power
of the Universities, by taking up this subject resolutely, and so
far as possible in concert, to confer most substantial benefit on
the nation. The Royal Society fully recognise that it is to the
Universities, as bodies expert in educational affairs, that the initi-
ation of a plan of procedure would naturally belong ; and they
do not formally offer any detailed recommendations. We are,
however, instructed to transmit for your information the state-
ment enclosed, which is representative of a large body of scientific
opinion, and may be of use in your deliberations.

We are, Sir, your obedient Servants,

j- Secretaries, R.S.
ARCH. GEIKIE, )

Notwithstanding efforts extending over more than half a century,
it still remains substantially true that the Public Schools have

1 20

APPENDIX

devised for themselves no adequate way of assimilating into their
system of education the principles and methods of science. The
experience of " Modern sides " and other arrangements shows that
it can hardly be expected that, without external stimulus and
assistance, a type of public school education can be evolved which,
whilst retaining literary culture, will at the same time broaden
it by scientific interests. On the other hand, it is admitted that
many students trained in the recent foundations for technical
scientific instruction have remained ignorant of essential subjects
of general education.

The bodies which can do most to promote and encourage im-
provement in these matters are the Universities, through the
influence which they are in a position to exert on Secondary
Education. This improvement will not, however, be brought
about by making the avenues to degrees in scientific or other
subjects easier than at present. Rather, the test of preliminary
general education is too slight already, with the result that a
wide gap is often established between scientific students care-
less of literary form and other students ignorant of scientific
method.

It may be suggested that the Universities might expand and
improve their general tests, so as to make them correspond with
the education, both literary and scientific, which a student, matri-
culating at the age of nineteen years, should be expected to have
acquired ; and that they should themselves make provision, in
cases where this test is not satisfied, for ensuring the completion
of the general preliminary education of their students before
close specialisation is allowed.

In particular, it appears desirable that some means should
be found for giving a wider range of attainment to students pre-
paring for the profession of teaching. The result of the existing
system is usually to place the supreme control of a public school
in the hands of a headmaster who has little knowledge of the
scientific side of education ; while the instructors in many colleges

121

APPENDIX

have to deal with students who have had no training in the exact
and orderly expression of their ideas.

Our main intention is not, however, to offer detailed suggestions,
but to express our belief that this question of the adaptation of
secondary education to modern conditions involves problems
that should not be left to individual effort, or even to public legis-
lative control ; that it is rather a subject in which the Universities
of the United Kingdom might be expected to lead the way and exert
their powerful influence for the benefit of the nation.

October 1903.

PRESIDENTS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

The President is elected annually, and until recent years was
eligible for re-election without any limit of time. About thirty
years ago an unwritten law was established, by which the President,
after having served five years, does not permit himself to be re-
nominated for the office, thus restricting the maximum term of
office to five years.

Name Date of Years in

election. office.

William, Lord Viscount Brouncker . 1663 14

Sir Joseph Williamson, Kt. . . 1677 3

Sir Christopher Wren, Kt. . . 1680 2

Sir John Hoskins, Bart. . . . 1682 i

Sir Cyril Wyche, Kt. 1683 I

Samuel Pepys ..... 1684 2
John, Earl of Carbery (Lord

Vaughan) . . . 1686 3

Thomas, Earl of Pembroke, K.G. . 1689 i

Sir Robert Southwell, Kt. . . 1690 5
Charles Montague (later Earl of

Halifax) 1695 3

122

APPENDIX

M Date of Years in

election. office.

John, Lord Somers . . . 1698 5

Sir Isaac Newton, Kt. . . 1703 24

Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. . . . 1727 14

Martin Folkes . . ... . 1741 n

George, Earl of Macclesfield . . 1752 12
James, Earl of Morton (Lord Aber-

dour) . . .';..* . 1764 4
James (afterwards Sir James)

Burrow 1768

James West 1768 4

James Burrow . . . 1772

Sir John Pringle, Bart. . , . 1772 6

Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. . . . 1778 41

William Hyde Wollaston . . 1820

Sir Humphry Davy, Bart. . . 1820 7

Davies Gilbert . . . . 1827 3

H.R.H. the Duke of Sussex . . 1830 8

The Marquis of Northampton . . 1838 10

The Earl of Rosse .... 1848 6

Lord Wrottesley . . . .1854 4

Sir Benjamin Brodie, Bart. . . 1858 3

Sir Edward Sabine, K.C.B. . . 1861 10

Sir George Airy, K.C.M.G. . . 1871 2

Sir Joseph D. Hooker, G.C.S.I. . 1873 5

William Spottiswoode . . . 1872 5

Thomas Henry Huxley ... 1883 2

Sir George Stokes, Bart. . . . 1885 5

Lord Kelvin, O.M 1890 5

Lord Lister, O.M 1895 5

Sir William Huggins, K.C.B., O.M. 1900 5

Lord Rayleigh, O.M. . . . . 1905

123

APPENDIX

MEDALS AWARDED BY THE ROYAL SOCIETY

The COPLEY MEDAL, founded in 1736 under the will (1709) of
Sir Godfrey Copley, Bart., F.R.S., is awarded annually for dis-
tinguished philosophical research, and irrespective of nationality.
It takes rank as the premier award of the Royal Society. It is
struck in gold.

The RUMFORD MEDAL, founded by Count Rumford in 1796,
is awarded biennially for the most important discoveries in heat or
light during the preceding two years. The medal is struck in gold
and in silver.

Two ROYAL MEDALS founded by George iv., and since continued
by the grace of successive Sovereigns, are awarded annually for the
two most important contributions to the advancement of Natural
Knowledge published originally in the British dominions, within a
period of not more than ten and not less than one year of the date
of the award. They are struck in gold and in silver.

The DAVY MEDAL, founded in 1869 under the will of Dr. John
Davy, F.R.S., brother of Sir Humphry Davy, is awarded annually
for the most important discovery in chemistry made in Europe
or Anglo- America. It is struck in gold.

The DARWIN MEDAL, founded in 1890, by subscription, is
awarded biennially for work of distinction in the field in which Mr.
Charles Darwin himself laboured. It is struck in silver or bronze.

The BUCHANAN MEDAL, founded in 1894, by subscription, is
awarded every five years in respect of distinguished services to
hygienic science or practice, in the direction either of original
research or of professional, administrative, or constructive work,
without limit of nationality or sex. It is struck in gold.

The SYLVESTER MEDAL, founded in 1897 as an international
memorial of the late Prof. J. J. Sylvester, F.R.S., is awarded
triennially for the encouragement of mathematical research, irre-
spective of nationality. It is struck in bronze.

124

APPENDIX

The HUGHES MEDAL, founded in 1900 under the will of D. E.
Hughes, F.R.S., is awarded annually, without restriction of sex or
nationality, for original discovery in the physical sciences, partic-
ularly electricity and magnetism or their applications. It is
struck in gold.

THE LIBRARY

On the 2nd January 1666-1667, Mr. Henry Howard (afterwards
sixth Duke of Norfolk) presented the Royal Society with " the
Library of Arundel House, to dispose thereof as their property,
desiring only that in case the Society should come to faile, it might
return to Arundel House ; and that this inscription, Ex dono Henrici
Howard Norfolciensis, might be put upon every book given them."
" The Society," it is added, "received this noble donation with all
thankfullnesse, and ordered that Mr. Howard should be registered
as a benefactor." This gift may be regarded as the nucleus of the
Society's Library.

A considerable part of the Arundel Library came originally from
the collection of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, a portion of
which, after his death, passed into the possession of the celebrated
Bilibald Pirckheimer, of Nuremberg, who died in 1530. This
portion was purchased by Howard's grandfather, Thomas, Earl of
Arundel, during his embassy at Vienna ; and it consisted of a great
number of printed books and many rare and valuable manuscripts.*
It may be mentioned that several of the books, which are still in
the Society's possession, contain Bilibald Pirckheimer's book-plate,
designed by Albrecht Diirer.

An entry in the Council Minutes of May 18, 1681, shows that the
Arundel Library was at that time kept separate from the other books,
and it probably remained so for many years. The volumes were
afterwards, however, distributed according to subjects, and in

1 Weld's History, Vol. I. p. 196.
125

APPENDIX

process of time many were disposed of. Sales of books were made
in 1713, 1745, and at subsequent dates. On June 20, 1872, the
Council, on the recommendation of the Library Committee, resolved
" to dispose of superfluous books from the collection of works on
* Miscellaneous Literature,' " and these probably included many
" Arundel books." The most valuable of the printed books of
purely literary interest retained by the Society were in 1883 collected
together, under the superintendence of the Treasurer, Sir John
Evans, in a case made for the purpose. They include a copy of
Caxton's Chaucer, and two volumes, printed on vellum, by Fust
and Schceffer, named the Liber Sextus Decretalium cum glossis
(A.D. 1465), and Cicero's Officia et Paradoxa (A.D. 1466) ; a very
perfect example of Albrecht Diirer's Historia Marice, Passio Domini,
et Apocalipsis, in one volume (A.D. 1511) ; a copy of the Nuremburg
Chronicle ; a very fine copy of Euclidis Elementa, Editio Princeps
(Venetiis. Ratdolt, 1482), with illuminated initials ; a number of
Editiones Principes of the Latin Classics, including many Aldines,
a large collection of Luther's and of scarce Reformation tracts, and
many other works of literary or typographical interest.

The bulk of the Arundel manuscripts was sold to the Trustees
of the British Museum in 1830 for the sum of £3559, the proceeds
being devoted to the purchase of scientific books ; these manuscripts
are still kept in the British Museum as a separate collection. A
catalogue of all the manuscripts and printed books originally given
to the Society by Henry Howard of Norfolk was printed in 1681, and
a copy of the same is in the Society's Library.

The scientific books in the Library probably number about
£0,000 volumes. ln the purchase of books, special attention has
for many years past been paid to scientific serials ; and the collection
of Journals and of the Transactions of Scientific Societies is now a
very large one. The Council annually votes a sum of £400 for the
purchase and binding of books.

A Catalogue of the Scientific Books in two octavo volumes is on

sale. Part I. (1881) containing Transactions, Journals, etc., 55. ;

126

APPENDIX

Part II. (1883), General Science, 155. A reduction on these prices is
made to Fellows. A List of Additions to the Library made during
the year will be found in the Year Book.

The Regulations for the use of the Library are governed by
Statutes, Chap. XIV., §§ 7-11 (see Year Book); and are embodied
in rules which are printed in the Year Book. The books lent out are
called in by order of Council usually once a year, at the beginning
of the Long Vacation ; and during the month of August no book is
allowed to leave the house, though the Library is kept open for
purposes of reference.

Besides the printed books, the Library contains a rich collection of
scientific correspondence, official records, and other manuscripts, in-
cluding the original manuscript, with Newton's autograph corrections,
from which the first edition of the Principia was printed ; the cele-
brated manuscript volume of the Commercium Epistolicum, relating
to the Leibnitz-Newton controversy on the priority of the invention
of fluxions ; the manuscript of John Aubrey's Memoires of Naturall
Remarques in the County of Wilts, written in 1685 ; a collection of
over 300 letters by Leeuwenhoek ; a collection of letters and manu-
scripts by Malpighi ; a collection of letters by Henry Oldenburgh
and Dr. J. Beale written to Robert Boyle ; Henry Oldenburgh's
Commonplace Book, containing drafts of his letters to Milton and to
Robert Boyle ; the autograph manuscript of Wallis's Treatise on Logic,
published in the folio edition of his works ; a large album containing
original letters, portraits, and other memorials of Joseph Priestley,
collected by James Yates, etc. Many of the manuscripts and most
of the manuscript letters are given in the Catalogue of Miscellaneous
Manuscripts, compiled by the late J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, F.R.S.,
in 1840, which is on sale (price 2s.). Among the series not there
catalogued are The Boyle Papers, bound in fifty-three volumes, the
Letter Books, containing copies of the early scientific correspondence
from the foundation of the Society to the end of the seventeenth
century, the Register Book of the Royal Society, containing copies

of scientific memoirs communicated to the Society from 1661 to

127

APPENDIX

1738, in twenty-one volumes ; the Journal Book, containing minutes
of the Society's meetings from 1660 to the present time ; the Council
Minutes, from the foundation of the Society ; and a series of guard-
books, containing the original manuscripts of early memoirs com-
municated to the Society, arranged under subjects. The manuscripts
of the Philosophical Transactions and Proceedings, and the papers
read before the Society but not published, are bound into volumes
and preserved for reference, as also are the Certificates of Candidature,
in which the qualifications of candidates are stated, and to which the
signatures of supporters are attached.

All the above-mentioned manuscripts, and others not here
specified, are open to the inspection of Fellows, but the loan of
them is exclusively vested in the Council. (From the Record of the
Royal Society.}

INSTRUMENTS AND HISTORICAL RELICS IN THE
POSSESSION OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

RELICS OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON

1. Solar Dial cut in stone, made by the hand of Sir Isaac Newton
when a boy, taken out in 1844 from the wall of the Manor House at
Woolsthorpe in which he was born, and presented the same year
to the Royal Society by the Rev. Chas. Turnor, F.R.S., to whose
family the house belonged.

2. Two rules made of the wood of Sir Isaac Newton's apple
tree at Woolsthorpe. Presented by Rev. Chas. Turnor, F.R.S.

3. Original Reflecting Telescope of Sir Isaac Newton, made
with his own hands in 1671. (Phil. Trans., vol. vii. p. 4004.)
Presented to the Royal Society by Messrs. Heath & Wing, Math. Inst.
Makers, Strand, London ; Feb. 6, 1766. 4 parts.

4. The manuscript of the Principia, from which the First Edition

was printed, with autograph corrections by Sir Isaac Newton.

128

APPENDIX

5. An autograph order, dated July 27, 1720, addressed by Sir
Isaac Newton to Dr. John Francis Ffouquier, directing him to
apply certain sums belonging to Newton in purchasing, on Newton's
account, South Sea Stock. Presented by Dr. Wollaston, P.R.S.

6. The original Mask of Newton's face, which belonged to
Roubillac, from the cast taken after death. Presented in 1839 by
Prof. Hunter Christie, Sec. R.S.

7. Sir Isaac Newton's Watch.

(j3yA lock of Sir I. Newton'sJHair^ Presented by Henry Garling,
Oct. 25, 1847.

9. Armchair, formerly belonging to Sir Isaac Newton. Be-
queathed in 1812 to Richard Saumarez. Bequeathed to the Royal
Society in 1891 by the late Mr. Thomas Kerslake of Clevedon.

OTHER RELICS AND INSTRUMENTS

1. Air-pump, with double barrel. Presented to the Royal Society
by the Hon. Robert Boyle in 1662.

2. Sir William Petty 's Double-bottomed boat.

" Upon the reading of a letter, sent out of Ireland to
the Secretary, concerning the expectation, which the Com-
mittee, that heretofore had given the Society an Account of
Sr William Petty's new ship, did entertain for hearing
the sense of the Society thereupon, it was

" Ordered, That the Committee should be put in minde
by the Secretary that the Matter of Navigation, being a
State-concerne, was not proper to be managed by the
Society ; And that Sr William Petty, for his private satis-
faction, may, when he pleases, have the sense (if he hath
it not already) of particular Members of the Society, con-
cerning his new Invention." — Council Minutes, May 27, 1663.

" The Papers of the next Philosophical Transactions,
having been considered of, and the account therein given
concerning the Structure and Advantages of Sr William
i 129

APPENDIX

Petty's Double-bottom'd ship ; it was resolved, that the
publication of them should be differed, till his Maty had been
made acquainted with the particular^ therein, relating to
the said ship." — Council Minutes, April 26, 1665.
Huygens's Aerial Telescope.

(i) An Object-glass of 22 feet focal length,"
with an eye-glass of 6 inches, and original apparatus
for adjustment, made by Huygens, and presented
by him to the Royal Society in 1691.

(2) The apparatus for using Huygens's object-

12 parts.

glass, constructed by Hooke.

(3) Additional apparatus, by Dr. Pound. Pre-
sented by Dr. Bradley.

(4) Ditto, by Mr. Cavendish.

4. An Object-glass by Huygens, of 170 feet focal length. Pre-
sented to the Royal Society by Sir Isaac Newton, P.R.S.

5. An Object-glass by Huygens, with two eye-glasses by Scarlet,
for a Telescope of 210 feet. Presented by* the Rev. Gilbert Burnet,
M.A., F.R.S., in 1724.

6. An Object-glass (Venetian), of 90 feet focal length, which
belonged to Flamsteed. Presented to the Royal Society by James
Hodgson, F.R.S., in 1737.

7. Convertible Pendulum of Captain Kater ; with the Agate
Planes.

The basis of the present system of British Weights and
Measures. — Phil. Trans., 1818, p. 37.

8. Chronometer, by Arnold.

9. Chronometer, by Arnold.

Both these Chronometers accompanied Captain Cook on
his second and third Voyages.

10. Armed Loadstone.

Grew's Catalogue of Rarities (p. 364) mentions an
Orbicular Loadstone or Ter[r]ella, given by Sir Christopher
Wren, the size of which, so far as the stone is concerned,

130

APPENDIX

agrees with the above ; it is conjectured that it may be
the same.

11. A Galvanic Battery, made by Dr. Wollaston, in a tailor's
thimble. Presented to the Royal Society by Sir A. W. Franks,
June 28, 1879.

In a letter to the late William Spottiswoode, P.R.S.,
which accompanied this present, Sir (then Mr.) Augustus
Wollaston Franks says that this little battery was given by
his godfather, Dr. Wollaston, to his mother, then Miss
Sebright. See also an anecdote about this battery in Weld's
History of the Royal Society, vol. ii. p. 309.

12. Dr. Priestley's Electrical Machine.

13. The original Model for Davy's Safety Lamp.

14. The Mountain Barometer used by the late Mr. Charles
Darwin, F.R.S., during his voyage round the world in H.M.S.
Beagle. Presented by his executors in December 1899.

The remainder of the instruments lately in the possession of
the Society have been deposited in the Victoria and Albert Museum,
South Kensington.

(From the Record of the Royal Society.)

Printed by

MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED
Edinburgh

«MJN 14 1S7I

Q Huggins, (Sir) William

£L The Royal Society

L86H8

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