Oh, dear, yes; we may well be proud of England. Remember, I have already
disclaimed more than once in these papers the vulgar error of
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