396 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



is not even a doubt. Of course it is improvable, and for 

 reasons which will presently appear. 



Our Art papers — what of them ? All of course excel- 

 lent, for are they not the product of half-unconscious selec- 

 tions accumulated through generations? Tested, however, 

 by the standards of science, they are found wanting. 



But — we are still following the ad captaudum method 

 and perhaps gratuitously — we do not know that it is 

 necessary to base an appeal for the extension of scientific 

 method to a hitherto unappropriated field by a demon- 

 stration of defects in that field, and corresponding remedies 

 resulting from their more exact scientific study. To 

 the popular judgment it is a very concrete proof of 

 potential progress, and may be interjected as the neces- 

 sary stimulant to positive thinking. Readers of Science 

 Progress are accustomed to another discipline. Whether as 

 actual investigators or as appreciative critics they recognise 

 an element of passion or sentiment in the mere extension 

 of the intellectual horizon, in penetrating into the inner 

 workings of things, which justifies effort and makes work 

 self-sufficient and independent of outside stimulus. So let 

 it be with them in all that appertains to paper, regarded as 

 an aggregate of well-defined chemical individuals and struc- 

 tural units — in other words, as an eminently fit subject for 

 scientific treatment. 



Of course a great many of us have taken the commodity 

 into use without inquiring as to what it is. Life in fact is 

 not long enough for more than superficial general know- 

 ledge. Outside that small field in which we may enjoy the 

 specialist's privilege of feeling " at home," we must accept 

 the services of the guide-book or the "personal conductor" 

 and be content with knowledge more or less second-hand. 

 Our justification is in the well-worn truism : Ars longa vita 

 brevis ; but always qualified by the schoolboy's translation 

 " Life is short but the ears of the ass are long," providing 

 a salutary reminder that a "little knowledge," of the 

 second-hand order, may be a " dangerous thing ". An apt 

 illustration comes to hand from actual and not very remote 

 experience. The author was approached by an enthusias- 



