If we have seemed to lay stress on the value of a knowledge of the
sciences of physics and chemistry to the exclusion of the mention of
others, our justification of the fact is that space is limited, and that
we believe that physics and chemistry underlie all the other sciences
and are of paramount importance to students of all other subjects. In
the sciences of biology, physiology, botany, geology, &c., little
advance can be made without a knowledge of the fundamental laws of
nature. The physical laws control movement, and the chemical laws
control growth, whether of animate or inanimate nature. Physical and
chemical phenomena are concerned in the upheaval of rocks and mountains
which govern the contour of the continents of the world. These contours
influence climates and peoples; as the contours change the people
change. The dwellers in the mountain regions differ in character from
the dwellers in valleys and plains; the inhabitants of cold districts
differ from the inhabitants of warm districts; but it is people who make
history, and historians cannot afford to pass by natural environments
and natural laws.
If a foundation of the fundamental sciences be laid at school the
student can subsequently build upon it the special science that is
suited to his career. It matters little what the calling in life of any
person may be; if he aim at success in that calling he must acquaint
himself with the laws by which he has his being, and by which he must
perforce be guided in all his actions as well as in his intercourse with
his fellow-men.
The many avenues now open to women for public work entail on them the
responsibility of fitting themselves for that work. They as much as, if
not more than, the housewife need to study the sciences which treat of
the safeguarding of human life. As councillors dealing with sanitary and
building laws, as inspectors of workrooms, of institutions, and of the
conditions of child-life, they owe it to themselves and to the community
they serve not to undertake those duties without adequate knowledge.
Adequate knowledge must be taken to mean scientific knowledge of those
matters of which, by offering themselves for such appointments, they
assume an expert knowledge. It is an irony that scientific training
should be willingly and even eagerly acquired when it is a question of
qualifying for a salaried post for work among strangers, and that a
mother should be content to bring to bear on the well-being and lives of
her own circle unscientific and amateur experience.
We have only been able to touch the skirt of a great subject, but our
end will have been achieved if we have succeeded in pointing the way for
a fuller realisation of the aims of earnest men and women for the saving
of child-life and the mitigation of disease, and if we have shown how
great that subject is--how much too great for anything but the most
superficial treatment in a single article.