11. "Mere Amateurs" - Page 2

patriotism. But freedom from that narrow vice does not imply inability
to recognise the good qualities of one's own race as well as the bad
ones. And the Englishman, left to himself and his own native methods,
used to cut a very respectable figure indeed in the domain of science.
No other nation has produced a Newton or a Darwin. The Englishman's way
was to get up an interest in a subject first; and then, working back
from the part of it that specially appealed to his own tastes, to make
himself master of the entire field of inquiry. This natural and
thoroughly individualistic English method enabled him to arrive at new
results in a way impossible to the pedantically educated German--nay,
even to the lucidly and systematically educated Frenchman. It was the
plan to develop "mere amateurs," I admit; but it was also the plan to
develop discoverers and revolutionisers of science. For the man most
likely to advance knowledge is not the man who knows in an encyclopædic
rote-work fashion the whole circle of the sciences, but the man who
takes a fresh interest for its own sake in some particular branch of
inquiry.

Darwin was a "mere amateur." He worked at things for the love of them.
So were Murchison, Lyell, Benjamin Franklin, Herschel. So were or are
Bates, Herbert Spencer, Alfred Russel Wallace. "Mere amateurs!" every
man of them.

In an evil hour, however, our pastors and masters in conclave assembled
said to one another, "Come now, let us Teutonise English scientific
education." And straightway they Teutonised it. And there began to arise
in England a new brood of patent machine-made scientists--excellent men
in their way, authorities on the Arachnida, knowing all about everything
that could be taught in the schools, but lacking somehow the supreme
grace of the old English originality. They are first-rate specialists, I
allow; and I don't deny that a civilised country has all need of
specialists. Nay, I even admit that the day of the specialist has only
just begun. He will yet go far; he will impose himself and his yoke upon
us. But don't let us therefore make the grand mistake of concluding that
our fine old English birthright in science--the birthright that gave us
our Newtons, our Cavendishes, our Darwins, our Lyells--was all folly and
error. Don't let us spoil ourselves in order to become mere second-hand
Germans. Let us recognise the fact that each nation has a work of its
own to do in the world; and that as star from star, so one nation
differeth from another in glory. Let each of us thank the goodness and
the grace that on his birth have smiled, that he was born of English
breed, and not a German child.

"Don't you think," a military