old English
science was one of these good things now in course of abolition by the
fashionable process of Germanisation.

Don't imagine it was only for France that 1870 was fatal. The sad
successes of that deadly year sent a wave of triumphant Teutonism over
the face of Europe.

I suppose it is natural to man to worship success; but ever since 1870
it is certainly the fact that if you wish to gain respect and
consideration for any proposed change of system you must say, "They do
it so in Germany." In education and science this is especially the case.
Pedants always admire pedants. And Germany having shown herself to be
easily first of European States in her pedant-manufacturing machinery,
all the assembled dominies of all the rest of the world exclaimed with
one voice, "Go to! Let us Germanise our educational system!"

Now, the German is an excellent workman in his way. Patient, laborious,
conscientious, he has all the highest qualities of the ideal
brick-maker. He produces the best bricks, and you can generally depend
upon him to turn out both honest and workmanlike articles. But he is not
an architect. For the architectonic faculty in its highest developments
you must come to England. And he is not a teacher or expounder. For the
expository faculty in its purest form, the faculty that enables men to
flash forth clearly and distinctly before the eyes of others the facts
and principles they know and perceive themselves, you must go to France.
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