4 i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



superiority of ignorance as a guide of conduct. Yet science is simply 

 knowledge classified, systematized, made orderly, impersonal, and exact, 

 instead of being left unclassified, fragmentary, personal, and inexact. 

 Auguste Comte calls it " common-sense methodized and extended." 

 There is plenty of knowledge which is not exact, and of exact knowl- 

 edge which is not methodized. There is plenty of experience which is 

 personal and incapable of being communicated to others. "Wanting the 

 illumination of many minds, this store cannot do the work of science, 

 which is the experience of many enlarging the experience of each. If 

 there is immense benefit in knowing what are the facts and the order of 

 the physical world in which we live, and of the social world in which 

 our higher life is lived, there is clearly a great advantage that this 

 knowledge should be made orderly and communicable; and the dread of 

 such an arrangement of knowledge is obviously irrational. Thus en- 

 lightened, we recognize in science the deliberate effort to reduce the 

 chaos of sensible experiences within the orderliness of ideal construc- 

 tions, condensing multitudes of facts into simple laws an effort which 

 the intellect acknowledges as a supreme duty, and which conduct ac- 

 knowledges as a guide. 



Another source of the dislike is the opposition of our native tenden- 

 cies. Science is abstract, impersonal, whereas our experiences are con- 

 crete and personal. It is systematic, and systematization is trouble- 

 some : our native indolence renders us impatient of labor, and our im- 

 patience leads us to prefer the facile method of guessing to the difficult 

 method of observing : we have to be trained into the preference of ob- 

 serving what the facts are, instead of arguing as to what the facts must 

 be. Science, moreover, is greatly occupied with remote relations ; now, 

 to feel an interest in these we must first have had them "brought 

 home " to us. Knowledge springs from desire. It begins when pro- 

 longed observation, stimulated by emotion, replaces the incurious ani- 

 mal stare at things ; and for this prolongation there is needed a sus- 

 taining motive. The sustaining motive of research is the conviction of 

 the vast increase of our power which science creates. Measuring by a 

 foot-rule and measuring by trigonometry may be taken as types of com- 

 mon knowledge and science : the result reached may in some particular 

 case be the same, whichever method be used ; but the incomparable ex- 

 tent of the second method, which is applicable where the foot-rule can- 

 not reach which measures the heights of mountains and the distances 

 of stars furnishes the sustaining motive to the study of trigonometry. 



Science demands exactness, and this demand irritates the vulgar 

 mind. The impatience with which your cook listens to your advice that 

 she should measure and not guess the quantities (advice you can never 

 get her to follow) is but the same movement which rouses your resist- 

 ance when any one desires to test your opinions by weighing the evi- 

 dence, or endeavors to show that your traditional beliefs rest on no 

 verifiable observations. Is not he who insists on evidence commonly 



