Sir E. Ray Lankester

“ Even the slight and rapid review just given of Man’s position, face to face with Nature, enables us to see what a tremendous step he has taken, what desperate conditions he has created by the wonderful exercise of his will; how much he has done and can do to control the order of Nature, and how urgent it is, beyond all that words can say, for him to apply his whole strength and capacity to gaining further control, so that he may accomplish his destiny and escape from misery. ”

“ A lull after victory, a lethargic contentment, has to some extent followed on the crowning triumphs of the great Nature-searchers whose days were numbered with the closing years of that nineteenth century which through them marks an epoch. No power has called on Man to arise and enter upon the possession of his kingdom—the ‘Regnum Hominis’ foreseen by Francis Bacon and pictured by him to an admiring but incredulous age with all the fervour and picturesque detail of which he was capable. ”

“ Those who enjoy great influence in the affairs of the University tell us with pride that Oxford not only determines what our best schools shall teach, but has, as a main pre-occupation, the education of statesmen, pro-consuls, leaders of the learned professions, and members of parliament! Undoubtedly this claim is well-founded, and its truth is the reason why we cannot be content with the maintenance by the University of the compulsory study of Greek and Latin, and the neglect to make the study of Nature an integral and predominant part of every man’s education. ”

“ At one time men believed that history repeats itself, and it was thought to be a proper and useful training for one who would take part in public affairs to store his mind with precedents and picturesque narratives of prominent statesmen and rulers in far-off days and distant lands. As a matter of fact it cannot be shown that any statesman, or even the humblest politician, has ever been guided to useful action by such knowledge. History does not repeat itself, and the man who thinks that it does will be led by his fragmentary knowledge of stories of the past into serious blunders. ”

“ New hope, new life will, when he does this, be infused into every line of human activity: Art will acquire a new impulse, and politics become real and interesting. To a community which believes in the destiny of Man as the controller of Nature, and has consciously entered upon its fulfilment, there can be none of the weariness and even despair which comes from an exclusive worship of the past. There can only be encouragement in every victory gained, hope and the realization of hope. ”

“ There is, in fact, continuity and healthy evolution in the realm of science. Whilst some onlookers have declared to the public that science is at an end, its possibilities exhausted, and but little of the hopes it raised realised, others have asserted on the contrary, that the new discoveries—such as those relating to the X-rays and to radium—are so inconsistent with previous knowledge as to shake the foundations of science, and to justify a belief in any and every absurdity of an unrestrained fancy. ”

“ The ‘return to Nature,’ which is sometimes vaguely put forward as a cure for the all-pervading ‘taedium’ of this age, is perhaps an imperfect expression of the truth that it is time for civilized man not to return to the ‘state of Nature,’ but to abandon his retrospective attitude and to take up whole-heartedly the Kingdom of Nature which it is his destiny to rule. ”

“ It is not generally realized how severe is the pressure and competition in Nature—not between different species, but between the immature population of one and the same species, precisely because they are of the same species and have exactly the same needs. From a human point of view the pressure under which many wild things live is awful in its severity and relentless tenacity. Not only are new forms established by natural selection, but the old forms, when they exactly fit the mould presented as it were for competitive filling, are maintained by the same unremitting process. ”

“ Man is held to be a part of Nature, a product of the definite and orderly evolution which is universal; a being resulting from and driven by the one great nexus of mechanism which we call Nature. He stands alone, face to face with that relentless mechanism. It is his destiny to understand and to control it. ”

“ We know really nothing of the heredity of mental qualities, nor how to estimate their presence or absence in the young so as to develop the mind to greatest advantage. We know the pain and the penalty of muscular fatigue, but we play with the brains of young and old as though they were indestructible machinery. What is called experimental psychology is only in its infancy, but it is of urgent necessity that it should be systematically pursued by the application of public funds in order that Man may know how to make the best use of his only weapon in his struggle to control Nature. ”

“ It has become more and more a matter of conviction to me—and I believe that I share that conviction with a large body of fellow students both in this country and other civilized states—that the time has arrived when the true relation of Nature to Man has been so clearly ascertained that it should be more generally known than is at present the case, and that this knowledge should form far more largely than it does at this moment, the object of human activity and endeavour,—that it should be, in fact, the guide of state-government, the trusted basis of the development of human communities. ”

“ Putting aside the troubles connected with special creeds and churches and the claims of the clerical profession to certain funds and employments to the exclusion of laymen, it should, I think, be recognized that there is no essential antagonism between the scientific spirit and what is called the religious sentiment. ‘Religion,’ said Bishop Creighton, ‘means the knowledge of our destiny and of the means of fulfilling it.’ We can say no more and no less of Science. Men of Science seek, in all reverence, to discover the Almighty, the Everlasting. ”

“ Yet it is the fact that this immensely important control of a great and constant danger and injury to mankind is left to the unorganized inquiries of a few enthusiasts. So little is this matter understood or appreciated, that those who are responsible for the welfare of States, with the rarest exceptions, do not even know that such protection is possible, and others again are so far from an intelligent view as to its importance, that they actually entertain the opinion that it would be a good thing were there more disease in order to get rid of the weakly surplus population! ”

“ It was Darwin’s merit to show that a process of selection which he called ‘Natural Selection’ must take place [11] in the free untouched conditions under which animals and plants exist, and have existed for ages, on this globe. Both animals and plants produce germs, or young, in excess—usually in vast excess. The world, the earth’s surface, is practically full, that is to say, fully occupied. Only one pair of young can grow up to take the place of the pair—male and female—which have launched a dozen, or it may be as many as a hundred thousand, young individuals on the world. ”

“ We boldly operate upon the minds of children in our systems of education without really knowing what we are doing. We blindly assume that the owners of certain minds, traditionally trained in amusing elegancies, are fit to govern their fellow-men and administer vast provinces; we assume that the discovery and comprehension of Nature’s processes must be the work of very few and peculiar minds; that if we take care of the body the mind will take care of itself. ”

“ Moreover, the struggle among the members of a species in natural conditions differs totally from the mere struggle for advancement or wealth [13] with which uneducated writers so frequently compare it. It differs essentially in this—that in Nature’s struggle for existence, death, immediate obliteration, is the fate of the vanquished, whilst the only reward to the victors—few, very few, but rare and beautiful in the fitness which has carried them to victory—is the permission to reproduce their kind—to carry on by heredity to another generation the specific qualities by which they triumphed. ”

“ To return to my original contention—the knowledge and control of Nature is Man’s destiny and his greatest need. To enable future leaders of the community to comprehend this, to perceive what the knowledge and control of Nature are, and what are the steps by which they are gained and increased, is the duty of a great University. ”

“ But it will not be done for many years because of the ignorance and unbelief of those who alone can act for the community in such matters. The discovery—the presentation to the eye and to exploring manipulation—of that well-nigh ultra-microscopic germ of death, seemed to me, as I gazed at its delicate shape, a thing of greater significance to mankind than the emendation of a Greek text or the determination of the exact degree of turpitude of a statesman of a bygone age. ”

“ We know, as well as any, that Man does not live by bread alone. Though the study of Nature is fitted to develop great mental qualities—perseverance, honesty, judgement, and initiative—we do not suppose that it completes Man’s mental equipment. Though the knowledge of Nature calls upon, excites, and gratifies the imagination to a degree and in a way which is peculiar to itself, we do not suppose that it furnishes the opportunity for all forms of mental activity. ”

“ His purpose, says Dean Church, was ‘to make knowledge really and intelligently the interest, not of the school or the study or the laboratory only, but of society at large.’ So that in surveying the advancement of science in the past quarter of a century we should ask not only what are the new facts discovered, the new ideas and conceptions which have come into activity, but what progress has science made in becoming really and intelligently the interest of society at large. ”

“ The comparative failure of what may be called the speculative triumph of the New Philosophy to produce immediate practical consequences has even led some among those prejudiced by custom and education in favour of the exclusive employment of Man’s thought and ingenuity in the delineation and imaginative resurrection of the youthful follies and excesses of his race, to declare that the knowledge of Nature is a failure, the New Philosophy of the Nature-searchers a fraud. ”

“ Traditional education has, owing to causes which are not far to seek, deprived the well-to-do class of a knowledge of, and interest in, Man’s relation to Nature, and of his power to control natural processes. During the whole period of the growth of man’s knowledge of Nature—that is to say, ever since the days of Bruno—the education of the well-to-do has been directed to the acquirement of entertaining information and elegant accomplishments, whilst ‘useful knowledge’ has been despised and obtained, when considered necessary, from lower-class ‘workmen’ at workmen’s wages. ”

“ Is there evidence that there is an increase in the influence of science on the lives of our fellow-citizens and in the great affairs of the State? Is there an increased provision for securing the progress of scientific investigation in proportion to the urgency of its need or an increased disposition to secure the employment of really competent men trained in scientific investigation for the public service? ”

“ NATURE’S REVENGES: THE SLEEPING SICKNESS. Among the strange and mysterious diseases to which mankind is subject in regions less familiar to the civilised world than Western Europe, none is stranger or more appalling in its quiet, inexorable deadliness than the Sleeping Sickness of the West African coast. ”

“ Within the past few years the knowledge of the causes of disease has become so far advanced that it is a matter of practical certainty that, by the unstinted application of known methods of investigation and consequent controlling action, all epidemic disease could be abolished within a period so short as fifty years. It is merely a question of the employment of the means at our command. Where there is one man of first-rate intelligence employed in detecting the disease-producing parasites, their special conditions of life and the way to bring them to an end, there should be a thousand. ”

“ The mental qualities which have developed in Man, though traceable in a vague and rudimentary condition in some of his animal associates, are of such an unprecedented power and so far dominate everything else in his activities as a living organism, that they have to a very large extent, if not entirely, cut him off from the general operation of that process of Natural Selection and survival of the fittest which up to their appearance had been the law of the living world. They justify the view that Man forms a new departure in the gradual unfolding of Nature’s predestined scheme. ”

“ It should not be for one moment supposed that those who attach the vast importance which we do to the knowledge of Nature imagine that Man’s spirit can be satisfied by exclusive occupation with that knowledge. ”