Science and Citizenship
provide for the few and simple wants of the aged astronomer in his retirement. Representations were made to the Central Government, and a complacent officialdom awarded an increase of the pension at the amount and rate of 2s. 6d. per week.
If we assume that at present there is no science, but sciences—unclassified and therefore ungeneralised, it would seem to follow that there is no scientific ideal, but only scientific ideals—unharmonised; and no scientific policy, but only scientific policies—un-co-ordinated. The scientific party, or what would be the scientific party if there was a common doctrine to give it cohesion, is broken up into disparate groups, most of which do not speak each other^s language. For instance, the mathematician and the physiologist are separated from each other by a wide arc in the circle of the sciences; but they have this in common, that each holds it an article of faith that he would fall short of his scientific duty if he did not acquire the language of France, Germany, and Italy, as well as of England. But if it should happen that here and there a mathematician or physiologist takes the pains of learning the language of comparative ethics, folklore, economics, or any other sociological field, he will be held by his brother mathematicians and physiologists to be doing what is at best a work of supererogation, at worst an act of reprehensible wastefulness. To the scientist of the physical or biological group it appears as much and as little a matter of professional obligation to acquire the language of the sociological group as to acquire
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