Science and Morals and Other Essays

by Sir Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

Let us look at the history of these dyes. The first aniline dye was discovered quite by accident, in 1856, by the late Professor W. H. Perkin. He called it "mauve," from the French word for the mallow, the colour of whose flower it somewhat resembled. In 1862 there was an International Exhibition in London; and those who remembered it and its predecessor of 1851 have declared that the case of aniline dye-stuffs—for by that time quite a number of new pigments had been discovered—excited at the later the same attention as that given to the Koh-i-noor at the earlier. The invention, out of which grew the enormous German business already alluded to, and with which has been associated the discovery and manufacture of the synthetic drugs, was entirely British in its inception and in its early stages. Moreover the raw materials on which it depended, namely, gas-tar products, were to be had in greater abundance in England than anywhere else. Yet, at the time when the war broke out, this industry had been allowed almost entirely to drift into German hands.

How was this? Let an expert reply. It was due, he tells us, to the neglect of "the repeated warnings which have been issued since that time" (viz. 1880, by which date the Germans had succeeded in capturing the trade in question) "in no uncertain voice by Meldola, Green, the Perkins (father and son), and many other English chemists." Further, he continues, two causes have invariably been indicated for the transfer of this industry to Germany—"first the neglect of organic chemistry in the Universities and colleges of this country" (a neglect which has long ceased), "and then the disregard by manufacturers of scientific methods and assistance and total indifference to the practice of research in connection with their processes and products." I remember talking some twenty-five years ago to a highly educated young student of Birmingham who was of German parentage though of English birth. He had just taken the degree of Doctor of Science in London University, and was on the eve of abandoning the adopted country of his parents for a position in the research laboratories of the Badische company, where he would be one among a number of chemists, running into hundreds, all engaged in research on gas-tar products. At that moment the great Birmingham gas-company was employing the services of one trained chemist.

Such was and is the neglect of science by business men. Could it have been otherwise, considering their bringing up? Let me again be reminiscent. I suppose the public school in England (not a Catholic school, for I was then a Protestant) at which I pursued what were described as studies did not in any very marked degree differ from its sister schools throughout the country. How was science encouraged there? One hour per week, exactly one-fifth of the time devoted weekly, not to Greek and Latin (that would have been almost sacrilegious), but to the writing of Greek and Latin prose and alleged Greek and Latin verse—that was the amount of time which was devoted to what was called science. I suppose I had an ingrained vocation for science, for it was the only subject, except English composition, in which I ever felt interest at school. If the vocation had not been there, any interest in the subject must necessarily have been slain once for all in me, as I am sure it was in scores of others, by the way it was taught; for the instruction was confided to the ordinary form-master, who doled out his questions from a text-book perfunctorily used and probably heartily despised by a man brought up on strict classical or mathematical lines. Our manufacturer is brought up in a school of this kind, and it would be a miracle if he emerged from it with any respect for science. Things have changed now, and for the better, as they have at most of the Universities; but we are dealing with the generation of manufacturers of my age who were largely responsible for the neglects now in question. Well, the boy left his school and went to Oxford or Cambridge, neither of which then greatly encouraged science. Its followers were, I believe, known as "Stinks Men." At any rate it is only comparatively recently that we have seen the splendid developments of to-day in those ancient institutions. One relic of the ancient days gives us an illuminating idea of how things used to be, just as a fossil shows us the environment of its day.[30] Trinity College, Dublin, has fine provision for scientific teaching, and a highly competent staff to teach. But in its constitution it shows the attitude towards science which till lately informed the older Universities.

Trinity College has in its Fellowship system one of the most important series of pecuniary rewards perhaps in Europe, of an educational character. A man has only once to pass an examination, admittedly one of great severity and competitive in character, and thenceforward to go on living respectably and doing such duties as are committed to him, to be ensured an excellent and increasing income for life. How great the rewards are will be gathered from the fact that a distinguished occupant of one of these positions some years ago endeavoured—with complete success—to enforce on me the importance of the Fellowship examination by telling me that he had already received over £50,000 in emoluments as a result of his success. He has received a good deal more since, and I hope will continue to be the recipient of this shower of gold for many years to come.[31] No doubt much might be urged for this system, which was for a long time popular in China for the selection of Mandarins, and I am not criticising it here. What I want to emphasise is that the examination for these valuable positions is either classical or mathematical, and there it ends. The greatest biologist in the world would have as much chance of a Fellowship as the ragged urchin in the street unless he could "settle Hoti's business" or elucidate [Greek: P] or do other things of that kind. It is a luminous example of what was—must we say is?—thought of science in certain academic circles. Of course it may be urged—I have actually heard it urged—that nothing is science save that which is treatable by mathematical methods. It was a kind of inverted M. Jourdain who used this argument, a gentleman who imagined himself to have been teaching science during a long life without ever having effected what he supposed to be his object. Then, again, our manufacturer, whose object in life is to make money, is naturally, perhaps even necessarily, affected by the kind of salaries which highly trained and highly eminent men of science receive by way of reward for their work. Few, if any, receive anything like the emoluments attaching to the position of County Court Judge, and I know of only one case in which a Professor's income, to the delight and envy of all the teaching profession, actually, for a few years, soared somewhat near the empyrean of a Puisne Judge's reward.

Perhaps this is not to be wondered at; for Parliament always contains many lawyers, and at the moment, I think, not a single scientific expert, at least among the Commons. This is not really a sordid argument, though it may appear so. The labourer, after all, is worthy of his hire; but in the scientific world it very, very seldom happens that the hire is worthy of the labourer. Even to this day there is plenty of truth in the description of the attitude of Mr. Meagles towards Mr. Doyce as detailed by the author of Little Dorrit. Perhaps that is partly because it is generally the man of business, and not the unhappy man of science, who gains the money produced by scientific discoveries. These are often, if not usually, made by accident, and by a man on the track of something else, on the elucidation of which he is probably so intent that he cannot spare time for side-issues, very likely never even thinks of them. Sir James Dewar discovered the principle of the "Thermos flask" whilst he was working at the exceedingly difficult subject of the liquefaction of air. I hope Sir James had the prescience to patent his discovery, and reap the reward which was due to him; but, if he did, he is one amongst a thousand who never took this trouble and of whom Sic vos non vobis might well be said. When Sabatier had shown the importance of combinations of hydrogen effected by what is known as a catalyst, numerous patents were taken out—by other people, of course—on which were founded very flourishing businesses. Sabatier profited by none of these—so I understand. He received a Nobel prize for his discoveries; but another hath his heritage.

Though science has not received any great encouragement, yet in spite of that—the cynic might say because of that—it has made amazing progress during the past half-century. Mr. Chesterton somewhere notes that "a time may easily come when we shall see the great outburst of science in the Nineteenth Century as something quite as splendid, brief, unique, and ultimately abandoned as the outburst of art at the Renaissance." That, of course, may be so, but as to the outburst there can be no question, nor of its persistence to the present day. That also is surely a curious phenomenon; for, as regards most other things, we seem to be in the trough of the wave, and not merely in these islands but all over the civilised world. In Art, in Music, in Literature, in the Drama, it would be difficult to argue in favour of a pre-eminence, or even of an equality of the present age, comparing it with its predecessors.

Take the politicians of the world; it is perhaps difficult, even foolish, for us who are living with them to prophesy with any approximation of accuracy what the historian of a future day may say about them. He may sum them up as respectable, honest mediocrities trying to do their best under exceptionally difficult circumstances; he may put them lower; he may put them higher; he may differentiate between those of different nations; but there is little doubt that, with the exception of the American President, he will not be able to point to any one of the calibre of Pitt or of Bismarck or of the less severely tried Disraeli or Gladstone.

But just the reverse is the case in science, which has men of the very first rank living, working, and discovering to-day. There are indeed signs that even our Government is cognizant of this. The creation of a Department of Industrial Scientific Research, the provision of a substantial income for the same, the increase of research-grants to learned societies, these and other things show that some attempt will be made to recognise the value of science to the State. Further, the lesson seems to have gone home to some few at least that there is no difference between what have been absurdly called Pure and Applied Science, since so very many "Applied" discoveries—such as the "Thermos"—arose in the course of what certainly would have been described as "Pure" researches.

It is to the public advantage that every educated person should know something about science; nor is this by any means as big or difficult an achievement as some may imagine. It is not necessary to teach any very large number of persons very much about any particular science or group of sciences. What is really important is that people should imbibe some knowledge of scientific methods—of the meaning of science. This can be done from the study of quite a few fundamental propositions of any one science under a good teacher—a first essential. Any person thus educated will, for the remainder of his life, be able at least to understand what is meant by science and the scientific method of approaching a problem. He will not, like an educational troglodyte at a recent Conference, refuse to describe anything as science which is not capable of mathematical treatment, nor allude compendiously to physiological study as "the cutting up of frogs." In a word, he will be an educated man, which can no more be said of one ignorant of science than it can be of one whose mind has never experienced the softening influence of letters.