At an earlier period, as, for instance, from neolithic times down to the close of paganism, under the slighter, less differentiated, less complex technological conditions of a more primitive state of the industrial arts, the Scandinavian countries had, each and several, proved large enough for a very efficient industrial organisation; and, again, during the early historical period they had also proved to be of a sufficient and suitable size to make up national units of a thoroughly competent sort, autonomous politically as well as industrially and working out their own fortunes in severalty,--very much as the British community does later on, in the days of the later handicraft era and the early growth of the machine industry. But during the era of handicraft, and indeed somewhat in a progressive fashion as the technology of that era grew to a fuller development and required larger territorial dimensions, the Scandinavian countries lost ground, relatively to the larger communities of Great Britain and the Continent; in a degree they progressively lost autonomy both in the political and the industrial respect, and much the same is to be said for their position in point of general culture. This falling into arrears and dependence is least marked in the case of Sweden, the largest and still passably isolated community among them; and it is most marked in the case of Norway and Iceland, the most isolated but at the same time the least sizable units of the Scandinavian group. In material sciences, that most characteristic trait of the Western culture, the case of these peoples is much the same as in the matter of technology and cultural autonomy at large; the largest of them has the most to show. Great Britain, on the other hand, fulfilled the conditions of size and isolation demanded in order to a free development of the industrial arts during this era, when the traffic in dynastic politics stood ready to absorb all accessible resources of industry and sentiment. And England accordingly takes the lead when the era of handicraft goes out and that of the new technology comes in. * * * * * Material science of the modern sort has been drawn into the discussion as a cultural phenomenon closely bound up with the state of the industrial arts under the handicraft system. This modern science may, indeed, be taken as the freest manifestation of that habit of mind that comes to its more concrete expression in the technology of the time. To show the pertinency of such a recourse to the state of science as an outcome of the discipline exercised by the routine of life in the era of handicraft some further detail touching the state and progress of scientific inquiry during that period will be in place.