THE ROYAL ROAD

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 131, 30 November 1922, Page 4

THE ROYAL ROAD

KNOWLEDGE TESTS FOR M.P.'S

NATURE'S SECRETS.

(PItOM OCR O-WM CORRItPOWttKT.)

LONDON, 13th October

" No man should Nbe a member of Parliament until he can give an intelligent lecture on a candle to a set of youngsters. And no man should be a Magistrate until he has invented something." Thus Professor A. W. Bickerkra, at a botanic gardens lecture., " Hudibras," he remarked, " was speaking satirically when he said, 'invent a shovel and become a Magistrate.' I am in real earnest. Before a man becomes a Magistrate he should show that he is in contact with the real life of' his time, as exemplified by his knowledge of the action of a pump or of the valves of a steam engine. Msmbersof Parliament, the legislators of a scientific age, ought to have some training in the basic principles of science. In the study*of a candle it is astonishing _ how many of these fundamental yet simple principles are involved. How many M.P.s could give, that lecture intelligently? I remember my old teacher Huxley, remarking that he hoped the time would come when the average member of Parliament would know as much of the elementary principles ■of science as an ordinary schoolboy. " Perhaps it may be said he does nowadays know nearly as much—not because he has increased his knowledge, but because the public schoolboy has lessened his! This, of course, applies to most of our so-called educated men and leaders of thought. The striking differences between our age and the flourishing period of Greece," he went on, " is entirely in the knowledge of basic principles of the universal laws of Nature. It is in the substitution of simple, broad principles for the pedantic minutia* of details that our progress depends. " We. have the accumulation of facts, and not their co-relation. If by the unification of science, we were to achieve the latter, there is practically no great secret of Nature that we should not be able to. solve. What is the use oi science if we lose sight of the. basic prin-. ciples? . There is. no doubt that mistaken conceptions of human evolution were the cause of the Great War. Let members of Parliament and other men who influence public opinion get % thorough grounding in broad principles. Our leaders are not in touch with Nature. The neglect begins hi the public schools, which afford a magnificent training in the art of dominance. A boy is taught to obey implicitly those above him, and to expect implicit obedience from those below him. lie is taught, also, how to find subordinates who will work for him. How much better it would be if he himself were trained_ to be able in later life to test the qualities of the man below him, which he is rarely able to do."