DEGENERA TION. 



a scientific spirit. They are, in fact, nothing of the 

 kind. American inventors and electric lamps, together 

 with all the factories in Sheffield, might be obliterated 

 without causing a moment's concern to a single 

 student of science. It is of the utmost import- 

 ance for the progress and well-being of science 

 that this should be understood ; that the eager 

 practical spirit of the inventor who gains large 

 pecuniary rewards by the sale of his inventions 

 should not be confounded with what is totally 

 different and remote from it, namely, the devoted, 

 searching spirit of science, which, heedless of pecu- 

 niary rewards, ever faces nature with a single purpose 

 — to ascertain the causes of things. It seems to me 

 impossible to emphasise too strongly in such a place 

 and in such a meeting as this, that Invention is 

 widely separate from, though dependenton. Science. 

 Invention is worldly-v/ise, and despises the pursuit of 

 knowledge for its own sake. She awaits the dis- 

 coveries of Science, in order to sell them to civilisa- 

 tion, gathering the golden fruit which she has neither 

 planted nor tended. Invention follows, it is true, the 

 footsteps of Science, but at a distance : she is utterly 

 devoid of that thriftless yearning after knowledge. 



