372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



fostered and encouraged in the future, and secondly, as to how the re- 

 sults of research may be applied for social advantage. 



The first and perhaps the finest thought of all is that research must 

 be pursued with the highest ideals of the imaginative mind apart from 

 all desired applications or all wished for material advantages. If we 

 might personify nature, it would seem that she does not love that re- 

 searcher who only seeks her cupboard, and never shows her finest treas- 

 ures to him. She must be loved for her own beauty and not for her 

 fortune, or she will ne'er be woed and won. Not even the altruistic 

 appeal of love for suffering mankind would seem to reach her ears; she 

 seem to say : " Love me, be intimate with me, search me out in my 

 secret ways, and in addition to the rapture that will fill your soul at 

 some new beauty of mine that you have discovered and known first of 

 all men, all these other material things will be added, and then I may 

 take compassion on your purblind brothers and allow you to show them 

 these secret charms of mine also, so that their eyes may perchance grow 

 strong, and they, too, led hither by you, may worship at the shrine of 

 my matchless beauty." By all the master's discoveries in all the paths 

 of science, Nature is ever teaching us this great doctrine to which we 

 have closed our ears so long. She tells us the creation of the world is 

 not finished, the creation of the world is going on, and I am calling 

 upon you to take a part in this creation. Never mind that you can 

 not see the whole, love that you see, work at it, and be thankful that I 

 have given you a part to play with so much pleasure in it, and so doing 

 you will rise to the highest ideal. 



This is religion with thirst for knowledge as its central spring; does 

 it differ much from those aspirations which have made men of all na- 

 tions worship throughout all the ages? Anthropology teaches us that 

 the religious system of a race of men gives a key to their advancement 

 in civilization. If this be so, growth in natural knowledge must ele- 

 vate our highest conceptions, furnish purer ideals and give us more of 

 that real religion that is to be found running so strongly in the minds 

 of great individuals such as Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Louis Pas- 

 teur, Auguste Comte. A great man may be strongly opposed to the 

 orthodox creeds of his day, he may even sneer at them, he may be burnt 

 at the stake by their votaries, and yet be a man of strong religious feel- 

 ings and emotions which have furnished the unseen motive power, per- 

 haps unsuspected even by himself, that leads to a whole life of scientific 

 heroism and enthusiasm. 



The practical lesson for us to learn from all this is that we must con- 

 sider research as sacred and leave it untrammelled by fetters of utilitar- 

 ianism. The researcher in functional biology, for example, must be left 

 free to pursue investigations as inspiration leads him on any living 

 structure from a unicellular plant to a man, and must not be expected 



