HENRI POINCARE AS AN INVESTIGATOR 211 



joys and above all that of doing good immediately to humanity and correcting 

 evils without forcing the remedy to wait. 



The scientist is accustomed to conquer truth only by degrees; for him all 

 certainty should be bought by long hesitations, by perpetually feeling his way. 

 He suspects what comes too easily, and accepts it only after submitting it to 

 numerous and diverse proofs. The man who must act can not embarrass himself 

 by such scruples. He cares little for a truth which must wait so long, because 

 it may arrive too late, and after the moment for action has passed. He must 

 make rapid conquests; sometimes these are not the most durable nor those we 

 should esteem. He also has to avoid reefs which we know not, we for whom 

 time does not count, and sometimes we are tempted to say a true scientist ought 

 not to risk them; how much better on the contrary to congratulate ourselves that 

 there are men skilful enough to avoid them. 



Towards pure science his attitude was almost adoration. It is best 

 set forth by extracts from his " Value of Science " and " Science and 

 Method": 



The search for truth should be the goal of our activity; it is the only end 

 worthy of it. . . . When I speak here of truth doubtless I mean primarily scien- 

 tific truth, but I wish to speak also of moral truth, one of whose aspects is what 

 we call Justice. ... To find one as well as to find the other, it is necessary to 

 struggle to the utmost to free ourselves from the bonds of prejudice and passion, 

 to attain absolute sincerity. 



The best expression of the harmony of nature is Law. Law is one of the 

 most recent conquests of the human mind. Man demands that his gods prove 

 their existence by miracles, but the eternal marvel is that there are not miracles 

 all the time. And the world is divine because it is harmonious. Were it ruled 

 by caprices what could ever prove it due to aught but chance? 



But does this harmony which the human intellect believes it finds in nature 

 exist outside the intellect? Doubtless not; a reality completely independent of 

 the mind that conceives it, sees it, feels it, is an impossibility. What we call 

 objective reality is, in the last analysis, what is common to many thinkers and 

 could be common to all; this common part, we shall see, can be only the harmony 

 expressed by mathematical laws. 



So we conclude that this harmony is the sole objective reality, the sole truth 

 we can ever attain, and if I add that the universal harmony of the world is the 

 source of all beauty, it becomes comprehensible how we should prize the slow 

 and painful progress by which we learn little by little to know it. 



The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it 

 because it pleases him, and it pleases him because it is beautiful. Were nature 

 not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, life would not be worth living. 

 I do not mean here, of course, that beauty which impresses the senses, the beauty 

 of qualities and appearances; not that I despise it — far from it; but that has 

 nought to do with science; I mean that subtler beauty of the harmonious order 

 of the parts which pure intellect appreciates. This it is which gives a body, a 

 skeleton as it were, to the fleeting appearances that charm the senses, and with- 

 out this support the beauty of these fugitive dreams would be but imperfect, 

 because it would be unstable and evanescent. On the contrary intellectual 

 beauty is self-sufficient and for its sake, rather than for the good of humanity, 

 does the scientist condemn himself to long and tedious labors. 



