ific 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.
Uncomfortable as the reflection may be, it is not to be denied that
the countries in which science has already attained the greatest
influence and recognition in public affairs are Germany and Japan,
where the opinions of the ignorant are not invited. But facts must be
recognised, and our government is likely to remain in the hands of
those who have the gift of speech. A general substitution of
scientific men for the "vocal" could scarcely be achieved, even if the
change were desirable. The utmost limit of success which the
conditions admit is some inoculation of scientific interest and ideas
upon the susceptible members of the classes already preferred. That a
large proportion of those persons are in the biological sense
resistant to all such influences must be expected. Granting however
that a section perhaps even the majority, of our [Greek: beltistoi]
may prove unamenable to the influences of science no one can doubt
that under the present system of education a proportion of not
unintelligent boys in practice have little option. From earliest youth
classics are offered to them as almost the sole ve