THE MOTIVE FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 501 



Wheeler Electric Company. Mr. Joseph Sachs has also invented 

 an electric engine, which is described in Cassier's Magazine for 

 February, 1895. Undoubtedly in the future some machine of this 

 kind will be introduced, but at present the industry is still in its 

 infancy. 



[To be concluded.] 



THE MOTIVE FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 



By HUBERT LYMAN CLARK. 



AT the meeting of the British Association for the Advance- 

 - ment of Science held at Oxford in August, 1894, the presi- 

 dent, the Marquis of Salisbury, delivered a remarkable address 

 on Unsolved Problems of Science, which called forth much criti- 

 cism, particularly from scientific journals. The speaker called the 

 especial attention of his audience to four great questions which, 

 with all the boasted advances of science, still remain unsolved, and 

 the solution of which seems as far distant to-day as ever. These 

 questions were, the origin of the chemical elements, the problem 

 of the ether, the origin of life, and the theory of evolution. The 

 tendency of the address was certainly not to give encouragement 

 that these problems would soon or even ultimately be cleared up 

 by the work of scientists, but rather indicated a certain satisfac- 

 tion that there were nuts to crack which even the British Associ- 

 ation would find too hard. This tone was especially evident in 

 the treatment of the subject of organic evolution, and the speaker 

 made it plain that he considered certain of the objections to that 

 doctrine conclusive and was ready, for one, to fall back on the 

 doctrine of design to explain all the innumerable variations and 

 adaptations which we see in animal and plant life about us. 

 That the whole address was certainly reactionary there can be 

 no doubt, but it seems to be unfortunately true that certain of the 

 criticisms which it has called forth are to be equally condemned 

 for going at once to the other extreme. In one of the leading sci- 

 entific magazines of this country the reviewer says, under the 

 heading Back to Dogma : 



" It needs but a few moments of careful and candid considera- 

 tion to show that the doctrine of design means the death of scien- 

 tific investigation. If things are so because they were intention- 

 ally made so or because certain processes were miraculously ex- 

 pedited, then the universe may be the theater of will, but not of 

 forces the operation of which we can hope to understand. . . . 

 The reason why the doctrine of design is so popular is partly be- 

 cause it is such a saver of intellectual toil, and partly because by 



