These
slender connections have long since withered away. This decline in the
public estimation of science and scientific men has coincided with a
great increase both in the number of scientific students and in the
provision for teaching science. It has occurred also in the period
during which something of the full splendour and power of science has
begun to be revealed. Great regions of knowledge have been penetrated
by the human mind. The powers of man over nature have been multiplied
a hundredfold. The fate of nations hangs literally on the issue of
contemporary experiments in the laboratory; but those who govern the
Empire are quite content to know nothing of all this. Intercommunication
between government departments and scientific advisers has of course
much developed. That, even in this country, was inevitable. Otherwise
the Empire might have collapsed long since. Experts in the sciences
are from time to time invited to confer with heads of Departments and
even Cabinet Ministers, explaining to them, as best they may, the
rudiments of their respective studies, but such occasional
night-school talks to the great are an inadequate recognition of the
position of science in a modern State. Science is not a material to be
bought round the corner by the dram, but the one permanent and
indispensable light in which every action and every policy must be
judged.
To scientific men this is so evident that they are unable to imagine
what the world looks like to other people.
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