10 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



able knowledge it may convey. We are too apt to forget 

 this purely educational side of science in the great value 

 of its practical applications. We see too often the plea 

 raised for science that it is useful knoivledge, while 

 philology and philosophy are supposed to have small 

 utilitarian or commercial value. Science, indeed, often 

 teaches us facts of primary importance for practical life ; 

 yet not on this account, but because it leads us to classi- 

 fications and systems independent of the individual thinker, 

 to sequences and laws admitting of no play-room for in- 

 dividual fancy, must we rate the training of science and 

 its social value higher than those of philology and phil- 

 osophy. Herein lies the first, but of course not the sole, 

 ground for the popularisation of science. That form of 

 popular science which merely recites the results of in- 

 vestigations, which merely communicates useful knowledge, 

 is from this standpoint bad science, or no science at all. 

 Let me recommend the reader to apply this test to every 

 work professing to give a popular account of any branch 

 of science. If any such work gives a description of 

 phenomena that appeals to his imagination rather than 

 to his reason, then it is bad science. The first aim of 

 any genuine work of science, however popular, ought to 

 be the presentation of such a classification of facts that 

 the reader's mind is irresistibly led to acknowledge a 

 logical sequence — a law which appeals to the reason 

 before it captivates the imagination. Let us be quite 

 sure that whenever we come across a conclusion in a 

 scientific work which does not flow from the classification 

 of facts, or which is not directly stated by the author to 

 be an assumption, then we are dealing with bad science. 

 Good science will always be intelligible to the logically 

 trained mind, if that mind can read and translate the 

 language in which science is written. The scientific 

 method is one and the same in all branches, and that 

 method is the method of all logically trained minds. 

 In this respect the great classics of science are often the 

 most intelligible of books, and if so, are far better worth 

 reading than popularisations of them written by men with 



