544 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



search, little need here be said. Ostensibly such aid is given for 

 selfish motives, since every modern government demands the help 

 of science in return. Nowadays no government could long exist 

 were it deprived of all the resources for defense and intercommu- 

 cation which science has invented. The relation between science 

 and the state, therefore, is a mutual relation, and each needs the 

 assistance of the other. In Washington the fact is manifest ; it is 

 recognized in the organization of nearly every administrative de- 

 partment ; and nowhere is it more apparent than under the Com- 

 missioner of Patents. From science the Government is daily 

 receiving benefits ; to science, therefore, it is rightly a liberal 

 giver ; and through its patronage many investigations become 

 possible which, because of their magnitude, would be beyond the 

 reach of private undertaking. Doubtless the time will come when 

 the scientific resources of the national capital will be concentrated 

 more than they are now, and so made more efficient ; and sooner 

 or later they should be crowned by the establishment of a national 

 university, in which the highest and most productive scholarship 

 may find a fitting home. 



So far my statements have been tinged with rose-color. The 

 great achievements of science command our admiration, and ad- 

 mirable also are the agencies by which it has been advanced. 

 Still, much remains to be done, and many are the. gaps in our 

 knowledge. Take any important series of physical data, or any 

 well-defined group of chemical compounds, bring the facts to- 

 gether in systematic form, and the strangest deficiencies will 

 become manifest. Take, for example, those physical properties 

 of the chemical elements which are capable of quantitative meas- 

 urement, and not for one of them are the attainable data even 

 approximately complete. Even iron, copper, gold, silver, and 

 mercury are but imperfectly known. Were it not for theory, that 

 apprehension of natural law through which science can pro})hesy, 

 reaching out from the seen to the unseen, a great part of our 

 knowledge would be little more than bare empiricism, and re- 

 search itself would lack its keenest implement. It is common 

 among ignorant men, themselves wildly speculative, to affect a 

 contempt for theory, and yet without theory science could not 

 exist. All great discoveries begin with theory, and lead up to 

 wider generalizations upon which new researches find a secure 

 foothold. The history of science teaches no more certain lesson 

 than this. 



It is easy to find a reason for the incompleteness of our knowl- 

 edge. Apart from the vastness of the field to be explored, itself a 

 sufficient excuse for ignorance, the more obvious deficiencies are 

 due to excessive individualism in research. Thousands of earnest 

 men are working independently, with insufficient reference to one 



