Probably no boy able to afford a good secondary
school, certainly none able to proceed to a university, is debarred
from scientific teaching merely because it does not "form an integral
part" of the curriculum. This alone suffices to prove that the real
cause of the deplorable neglect of science is to be sought elsewhere.
The fundamental difficulty is that which has been already indicated,
that public taste and judgment deliberately prefers the type known as
literary, or as it might with more propriety be designated, "vocal."
In the schools there is no lack of science teaching, but the small
percentage of boys whose minds develop early and whose general
capacity for learning and aptitude for affairs mark them out as
leaders, rarely have much instinct for science, and avoid such
teaching, finding it irksome and unsatisfying. These it is, who going
afterwards to the universities, in preponderating numbers to Oxford,
make for themselves a congenial atmosphere, disturbed only by faint
ripples of that vast intellectual renascence in which the new shape of
civilisation is forming. With self-complacency unshaken, they assume
in due course charge of Church and State, the Press, and in general
the leadership of the country. As lawyers and journalists they do our
talking for us, let who will do the thinking. Observe that their
strength lies in the possession of a special gift, which under the
conditions of democratic government has a prodigious opportunity.
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