Subjects of social welfare / by Sir Lyon Playfair.

  • Playfair, Lyon Playfair, Baron, 1818-1898.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Subjects of social welfare / by Sir Lyon Playfair. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    348/424 (page 336)
    of those men above them whose duty it is to superintend their labour ? True education consists in fitting a man for a complete life. That is no education at all which gives him knowledge useless for the activities and duties of his existence. I have said that science and art must be studied for their own sake by those who try to advance their boundaries ; and are only available to producers who know how to apply the discoveries of philosophers. Science is like the fertilising rain, which invigorates crops growing on land fitted for its reception, though it runs to waste, without percolating the soil, if that be hard and untilled. So, just in proportion as different States prepare their population by culture, will they increase in strength or dwindle in weak- ness. The future histories of the world will not be those of blood and rapine. They will recount the achievements of those nations which have ameliorated the conditions of the human race by the discoveries and applications of science. It is for the United Kingdom to determine whether she desires her history to be that of a country which was raised to the highest place among States by the genius of mighty men, though she lost that position by a blind reliance on the practical empiricism of her people; or whether her future history is to be that of an enlightened nation which, seeing that a general diffusion of science and art is giving to other countries advantages in industrial competition, added this intellectual power to the practical aptitude of her popu- lation. It is a truth incapable of being gainsaid, that science must be joined to practice in the advancing com- petition of the world, in order that a nation may retain the strength and energy of manhood; for States, like indi- viduals, fall into decrepitude and decay.