At Oxford the case is no doubt very different.  The measure in which the sciences are esteemed appears only too plainly in the small proportion of Fellowships filled by men of science.  Progress has nevertheless begun.  At the remarkable Conference called in May, 1916, to protest against the neglect of science it was noticeable that the speakers were, in overwhelming majority, Oxford men[3].

Among the educational institutions of England there is no general neglect to provide teaching of natural science and much of the language used in reference to the problem of reform is not really in accord with fact.  Probably no boy able to afford a good secondary school, certainly none able to proceed to a university, is debarred from scientific teaching merely because it does not “form an integral part” of the curriculum.  This alone suffices to prove that the real cause of the deplorable neglect of science is to be sought elsewhere.  The fundamental difficulty is that which has been already indicated, that public taste and judgment deliberately prefers the type known as literary, or as it might with more propriety be designated, “vocal.”  In the schools there is no lack of science teaching, but the small percentage of boys whose minds develop early and whose general capacity for learning and aptitude for affairs mark them out as leaders, rarely have much instinct for science, and avoid such teaching, finding it irksome and unsatisfying.  These it is, who going afterwards to the universities, in preponderating numbers to Oxford, make for themselves a congenial atmosphere, disturbed only by faint ripples of that vast intellectual renascence in which the new shape of civilisation is forming.  With self-complacency unshaken, they assume in due course charge of Church and State, the Press, and in general the leadership of the country.  As lawyers and journalists they do our talking for us, let who will do the thinking.  Observe that their strength lies in the possession of a special gift, which under the conditions of democratic government has a prodigious opportunity.  Uncomfortable as the reflection may be, it is not to be denied that the countries in which science has already attained the greatest influence and recognition in public affairs are Germany and Japan, where the opinions of the ignorant are not invited.  But facts must be recognised, and our government is likely to remain in the hands of those who have the gift of speech.  A general substitution of scientific men for the “vocal” could scarcely be achieved, even if the change were desirable.  The utmost limit of success which the conditions admit is some inoculation of scientific interest and ideas upon the susceptible members of the classes already preferred.  That a large proportion of those persons are in the biological sense resistant to all such influences must be expected.  Granting however that a section perhaps even the majority, of our [Greek:  beltistoi] may prove unamenable to the influences