224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



it is found where the breakers surge against the shores of the unknown. 

 But in the consciousness, the stable, the crystallized, the permanent 

 combinations are formed; the new world is organized, surveyed, 

 mapped, and the frontier is widened. Here everything proceeds under 

 hard supervision. 



Finally, the research student, the investigator, must have a burning 

 love for the search for truth, as well as for the truth itself. And when 

 in his somber moods he asks, what does it signify in the end? he finds 

 the answer at the close of Poincare's " Value of Science." He expresses 

 the significance of science in these clear terms : 



Civilizations are measured only by their science and their art. Some per- 

 sons are surprised at the formula: science for science's sake; yet it is quite as 

 good as life for life's sake, if life is only misery; and even as happiness for 

 happiness' sake, if one does not place all pleasures on the same level, if one 

 does not admit that the end of civilization is to furnish more alcohol to people 

 who like to drink. 



Every action must have an aim. We have to suffer, we have to work, we 

 have to pay for our seat at the show, but it is in order that we may see, or at 

 least that others may sometimes see. 



What is not thought is nought ; since we can think only thoughts, and every 

 word we use in talking about things stands for a thought, to assert there is 

 anything else than thought is a senseless affirmation. 



Meanwhile — a strange contradiction for those who believe in time — geologic 

 history teaches that life is only an episode between two eternities of death; and 

 even in this episode conscious thought has endured and will endure but a moment. 

 Thought is but a flash in the midst of a long night. 



Yet this flash indeed is everything. 



