the mortifying lesson, that he is as much an upstart in her chronology as he is an atom among her everlasting hills. It was science that converted the microscope from its drop of water and its lens of glass into that noble instrument which is every hour disclosing the otherwise unseen creations of unparalleled wisdom; and it is science that has swollen the spy-glass of Galileo into the colossal tube with which Lord Rosse is contemplating the infinitely distant and the infinitely great.

But while science has thus transcended art in expounding mysteries which the latter never pretended to approach, she has outstripped her handmaid in theories which art might have been expected to reduce to practice. The chemical philosopher has determined the elements of the diamond; but the artist has not electrified them into the brilliant gem. The mathematician has discovered the true form of a perfect lens; but the optician has not succeeded in giving the hyperbolic form to his materials. The natural philosopher has shewn how to make telescopes perfectly achromatic; but the artist in glass cannot furnish the materials necessary to construct them. The natural philosopher has taught us the use of electricity as a moving power, and as a source of heat and of light; but art has not yet taught us to apply it in moving our ships, or in heating our dwellings, or in lighting our

streets.

In thus pointing out to those who are not deeply versed in the principles and history of science, the relations between art and science, our object is to prepare the reader for the great truth advocated by Dr. Playfair, "that the study of abstract science is essential to the progress of industry." By means of numerous and instructive examples, in which the most abstract chemical and physical truths have resulted in the most valuable practical applications, in the establishment of new arts and new manufactures, he has shewn to the "practical men," and to the ignorantly learned, if the prejudices of the one and the incapacity of the other will allow them to see it, that "practice and science must now join together in a solemn union," and "that the time is past when practice can go on in the blind and vain confidence of a shallow empiricism, severed from science like a tree from its roots." "It is indispensable," he adds, " for this country to have a scientific education in connexion with manufactures, if we wish to outstrip the intellectual competition which now, happily for the world, prevails in all departments of industry. As surely as darkness follows the setting of the sun, so surely will England recede as a manufacturing nation unless her industrial population become much more conversant with science than they now are."

That these views are not peculiar to ourselves, or to the dis

Views of Liebeg and Humboldt.

553

tinguished chemist whom we have quoted, might be shewn by numerous references to the various lectures on the subject of the Exhibition, and to the reports of the different juries which will soon be published. In advocating the same truth, a foreigner peculiarly acquainted with the relations between abstract and practical science, and with the working of the educational institutions on the Continent, the illustrious Liebig, has told the world, and England in particular, with whose wants he is well acquainted," that the great desideratum of the present age is practically manifested in the establishment of schools in which the national sciences occupy the most prominent place in the course of instruction. From these schools a more vigorous generation will come forth, powerful in understanding, qualified to appreciate and to accomplish all that is truly great, and to bring forth fruits of universal usefulness. Through them the resources, the wealth, and the strength of empires will be incalculably increased." In a similar strain has the illustrious Humboldt, the prince and patriarch of philosophers, pled the cause of abstract science as the fountain of national wealth, and the source of national greatness and security.

"An equal appreciation," he says, "of all parts of knowledge, is an especial requirement of the present epoch, in which the material wealth and the increasing prosperity of nations are in a great measure based on a more enlightened employment of natural products and forces. The most superficial glance at the present condition of European States shews, that those which linger in the race cannot hope to escape the partial diminution and perhaps the final annihilation of their resources. It is with nations as with nature, which, according to a happy expression of Goethe, knows no pause in ever-increasing movement, development, and production-a curse still cleaving to standing still.

"Nothing but serious occupation with chemistry and natural and physical science can defend a State from the consequences of competition. Man can produce no effect upon nature, or appropriate her powers, unless he is conversant with her laws, and with their relations to material objects according to measure and numbers. And in this lies the power of popular intelligence, which rises or falls as it encourages or neglects this study. Science and information are the joy and justification of mankind. They form the springs of a nation's wealth, being often indeed substitutes for those material riches which nature has in many cases distributed with so partial a hand. Those nations which remain behind in manufacturing activity, by neglecting the practical applications of the mechanical arts and of industrial chemistry, to the transmission, growth, or manufacture of raw materials-those nations among whom respect for such activity does not pervade all classes-must inevitably fall from any prosperity they may have attained; and this by so much the more certainly and speedily

as neighbouring States, instinct with the power of youthful renovation, in which science and the arts of industry operate or lend each other mutual assistance, are seen pressing forward in the race."

Assuming, then, as an incontestable truth, and one admitted by the nation, that abstract science is necessary to the improvement and perfection of the practical arts, and that it is required from the student in the new College of Industry, we come to the discussion of a question not less important than any we have been considering. From what quarter are we to obtain the abstract science which we need, and how are we to obtain it in the largest quantity and of the best quality? Science is an article of which a certain quantity is produced annually in every civilized nation. It has therefore two forms-that which is imported, and that which is indigenous. Our imported science is introduced directly into this country in books, in scientific journals, and in the memoirs of foreign academies, and indirectly, in scientific instruments and apparatus manufactured abroad. These books and these instruments are taxed by an import duty, the one by weight and the other by value; so that the science which we have been lauding as the mainstay of our arts is actually a prohibited article, and prohibited, too, by the consent of the very legislators who are commissioners for the establishment of our industrial colleges! But when our imported books, and memoirs, and journals, and instruments, reach the learned individuals, who either purchase them, or receive them gratuitously from their authors, or from the academies of which they are members, they would be of little avail to art, and of as little use for public instruction, unless they were translated into our own language, and either published separately, or diffused through the nation in our scientific journals. It is well known, however, that a book of abstract science will not sell in this country owing to the heavy imposts upon knowledge-the tax upon the paper upon which it is printed, and the tax upon the advertisements which are required to make it known to the public. For the same reasons our scientific journals are unable to afford the expense of translations and abstracts from the scientific productions of foreign countries, and of the diagrams and plates which are so frequently necessary for their illustration. The conse quence of this is, that we have not in England, or Scotland, or Ireland a single Journal of Science, or Magazine of Art of the least merit-either well conducted, well illustrated, or well circulated; and those which we have are neither patronized nor read by the nobility and gentry of the land, and scarcely looked into even by those who are most deeply interested in the advancement of science, both theoretical and practical. Hence our imported science is kept in bond through the apathy of our

Imported and Indigenous Science discouraged in England. 555

legislators, maintaining scientific ignorance among the people, and checking the progress of science and the industrial arts. Thus hostile to imported science, we should expect that our statesmen would be very friendly to that which is indigenous. But here, too, the ignorance and illiberality of our Governments stand in painful contrast with the wisdom and generosity of those of every other nation. Instead of being encouraged, our indigenous science labours under disabilities, as if an article of contraband, which it is the interest of the State to seize, or an immoral importation, which it is their duty to suppress. If important discoveries require for their description and illustration to be consigned in elaborate memoirs, our voluntary associations of philosophers, with limited means at their command, cannot afford to publish them; or if they can, they may possibly refuse, because their publication may interfere with the scientific claims of some of themselves or their functionaries. If the author desires or is obliged to publish his discoveries in a separate work, no bookseller will hazard the expense of printing and illustrating a volume, the sale of which will hardly repay the duty on paper and advertisements with which it is taxed. The consequence of all this is, that many English philosophers write books and memoirs of great learning and value which are never published, and others would willingly write them, were there any probability of their paying, as they do in foreign countries, the expense of publication.

If, on the other hand, our indigenous science is enshrined in a process, or instrument, or machine, which has required years for its elaboration or construction, the law will seize the property, as belonging to the public, if the confiding inventor has accidentally allowed his secret to transpire, or employed a faithless assistant to aid him in his labours.* As justly might the bystander appropriate the purse of gold that has dropped from his sovereign's hand, or the slave merchant claim the white child that has strayed from its home. But even if the inventor has kept his secret, by making use of no other hands but his own-a work of extreme difficulty, and itself injurious to the development of his invention or discovery-he must purchase a fourteen years' right of receiving any benefit from his labours, by paying in exchange for that right the sum of £176, (at present till the 1st of October 1852, between £300 and £500,) the public being put in possession of all the results of his invention, which it may have cost him many hundred pounds to secure. Some liberal friend or generous benefactor may perchance assist

*The late Lord Eldon, in the trial of a patent right, declared, that if he intended to take out a patent for an invention, he would not confide the secret of it even to his brother.

VOL. XVII. NO. XXXIV.

20

Re

the poor inventor to discharge the preliminary debt; but no sooner does he send his invention into the market, or offer licenses for the use of his instrument or process, than he is assailed by pirates, who openly rob him of his invention, on the ground of some trivial defect in his specification, or on the allegation that he has not clearly described his invention, or that it has been somewhere described before. If our indigenous science then is proscribed, in place of being fostered, by our Patent Laws, and if it is admitted on all hands that it is required by our industrial institutions as the mother and companion of art, some arrangements must be made to supply it in due abundance and of the requisite quality. It will no doubt be said, that we have the Royal Society and the other scientific institutions of the Empire engaged in the prosecution of abstract science, and the School of Mines actively occupied in the same cause. ferring to former articles, in which we have pointed out the defects of all voluntary associations, and especially our own, let us consider for a moment how such institutions must work in reference to the advancement of science. Those who labour for the Royal Society, for example, namely, the philosophers who contribute to its transactions, are its own members principally, or those who might be its members if they could afford it. These individuals, to whom, as well as to the active and unpaid officers of the society, the country is under the deepest obligations, carry on the researches to which accident or their own individual tastes may have directed them, consign the result of their labours in the Society's Transactions. Whole branches of science, such as those pointed out by Sir John Herschell,† are thus entirely neglected, and not even pursued in the Empire. Now this is an undoubted and essential feature in all voluntary institutions, and it is impossible to remedy the evil unless the society had power of appointing committees of their number to devote themselves as in the Institute of France, and other foreign academies, to special departments of science.

In societies supported by an entrance fee, and the annual contributions of its members, amounting in some cases when compounded for to £50 and upwards, the subscription is in reality a tax upon science, and when levied as it is from men of small income, stealing a little leisure for research from their professional avocations, or, what we know to be the case, sacrificing their professional gains on the altar of science, we cannot but view it, though freely paid, as worse than any of the taxes that have

* See this Journal, vol. vii. p. 230, and vol. xiv. p. 280, and Mr. Babbage's two works on the Decline of Science, and on the Exposition of 1851, passim. + See page 531 of this Number, and vol. xiv. p. 240.