They cannot realise that by
a majority of even the educated classes the phenomena of nature and
the affairs of mankind are still seen through the old screens of
mystery and superstition. The man of science regards nature as in
great and ever increasing measure a soluble problem. For the layman
such inquiries are either indifferent and somewhat absurd, or, if they
attract his attention at all, are interesting only as possible sources
of profit. I suspect that the distinction between these two classes of
mind is not to any great degree a product of education.
It is contemporary commonplace that if science were more prominent in
our educational system everybody would learn it and things would come
all right. That interest in science would be extended is probable.
There is in the population a residuum of which we will speak later,
who would profit by the opportunity; but that the congenitally
unscientific, the section from which the heads of government temporal
and spiritual, the lawyers, administrators, politicians, the classes
upon whose minds the public life of this country almost wholly
depends, would by imbibition of scientific diet at any period of life,
however early, be essentially altered seems in a high degree unlikely.
Of the converse case we have long experience, and I would ask those
who entertain such sanguine expectations, whether the results of
administering literature to scientific boys give much encouragement to
their views.
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