JOO 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The caution which the address 

 contains against taking too utilita- 

 rian a view of science is timely and 

 judicious. We do not believe the 

 intention of the author is to encour- 

 age the prosecution of alleged sci- 

 entific researches independently of 

 all assignable human motive; but he 

 would have all the main lines of 

 scientific inquiry pursued in a liberal 

 and disinterested spirit, in the belief 

 that the enlargement of knowledge 

 can not but subserve in some way or 

 another, and sooner or later, the in- 

 terests of the human race. He feels 

 that the true scientific spirit is not 

 one that makes pecuniary gain its 

 chief object. True types of the sci- 

 entic worker are to be found in Mi- 

 chael Faraday and the elder Agassiz, 

 who was " too busy to make money " ; 

 and the student of science who can 

 not to some extent work in the spirit 

 of these men may as well recognize 

 that it is not scientific truth he is 

 after but money. The greatest ad- 

 vances in Science, it is almost need- 

 less to say, have been made by those 

 who were serving her not for the 

 lust of gain, but for the love of dis- 

 covery — that is to say, by men like 

 Copernicus, Galileo, Harvey, Caven- 

 dish, Newton, Franklin, Jenner 

 Watt, Darwin, and Pasteur; and if 

 we would know what science is, it is 

 the lives, characters, and labors of 

 such men as these that we should 

 study, and not the achievements of 

 merely successful patentees. 



Another danger to which the stu- 

 dent of science is exposed is that of 

 paying little or no attention to any 

 department of science save that of 

 which he is making a specialty. It 

 is therefore of great importance that 

 the courses of study laid out in sci- 

 ence colleges should at the outset be 

 sufficiently broad to afford a thor- 

 ough grounding in the leading prin- 

 ciples of all the sciences and in the 

 application of scientific method to 



every field of inquiry. Only in this 

 way can a true sense of the power 

 and universality of science as a 

 method of thought and an engine of 

 the human mind be obtained. Why 

 is it that we are often so little im- 

 pressed with the intellectual char- 

 acter of this or that noted specialist? 

 The reason, we take it, is that his 

 mind lacks breadth; he knows his 

 own field of observation, but seems 

 to have little sense or appreciation of 

 what lies beyond it. It may have 

 been some one of this type who sug- 

 gested to Wordsworth his idea of an 

 "ever-dwindling soul"; certain it is 

 that a man may, by the too exclusive 

 pursuit of a narrow line of thought 

 and inquiry, fatally cramp his mind 

 and dim his spiritual vision. 



The foundation of all science is 

 observation, and Sir Archibald right- 

 ly dwells upon the supreme impor- 

 tance of cultivating and developing 

 the observing faculty to the utmost 

 extent. He states that a man may 

 possess a colossal intellect while his 

 faculty of observation may be of the 

 feeblest kind, and gives as an exam- 

 ple a very eminent mathematician, 

 lately deceased, who used to make 

 the most ludicrous mistakes as to 

 time and place. Upon this point we 

 feel like venturing a little dissent. 

 We doubt whether there ever was a 

 colossal intellect apart from a con- 

 siderable development of the power 

 of observation ; and that a great 

 mathematician should take very little 

 notice of what was going on in the 

 world about him would only show 

 that his powers of observation were 

 otherwise engaged. Take him in his 

 own field, and what a multitude of 

 things he would observe which a 

 man of inferior intellect, occupied 

 with the same studies, would over- 

 look ! It would be a somewhat rash 

 thing to undertake to cure an Archi- 

 medes or a Newton of that absent- 

 mindedness which, to the world at 



