COMEADES IN ZEAL. 309 



Another line of ♦ work is that of invention, the application of the 

 discoveries of science to human needs. It is the fashion to decry sci- 

 ence of this sort as commercial, and to speak with scorn of the financial 

 rewards which await those who are successful in its pursuit. 



But I am glad that the Sigma Xi finds room for the creative en- 

 gineer. In its last analysis the ultimate purpose of knowledge is the 

 regulation of human conduct. The end of knowing is doing, and the 

 justification of scientific research is that it makes life more comfort- 

 able, saner and richer. It is true that pure science must precede crea- 

 tion, but into some form of creative art all experimental science sooner 

 or later finds its way. "We may then welcome the engineer as an insep- 

 arable companion in the domain of science, comrade in zeal, diverging 

 in method, but loyal to fanaticism to the truth he can touch and feel. 



Highest of all lines of scientific work, most difficult of all, and 

 withal most susceptible of degeneration, is the study of causes and rela- 

 tions. This work is closely connected with all other forms of research ; 

 for every fact observed points us to the consideration of its cause. 



Each fact must be the resultant of some adequate force. 'The 

 globe is transparent law, not a mass of facts.' So Emerson tells us. 

 Law is the expression of the relation of cause and effect. Nothing 

 would be as it is, could it by any possibility have been something else. 

 Nothing is variable in the universe save the wayward human will, and 

 that only because its stimuli and reactions are too finely balanced to be 

 measured by our instruments of precision. 



Each peculiarity of structure, each character or quality of individual 

 or species, has a meaning or a cause. It is the work of the investigator 

 to find this meaning as well as to record the fact. "One of the noblest 

 lessons left to the world by Darwin," Frank Cramer says, "is this, 

 which to him amounted to a profound, almost religious, conviction, that 

 every fact in nature, no matter how insignificant, every stripe of color, 

 every tint of flowers, the length of an orchid's nectary, unusual height 

 in a plant, all the infinite variety of apparently insignificant things, is 

 full of significance. ' ' For him it was an historical record, the revela- 

 tion of a cause, the lurking place of a principle. 



For this reason, every line of work leads back to a causal inter- 

 pretation. Every fact clamors for it. This is the strongest impulse 

 which urges the devotee of science, the comrade in zeal, and his only 

 danger is that he respond to these calls prematurely. The ultimate end 

 of scientific research is found in prophecy, not in proclamations of the 

 mystic order, but in such mastery of the solid ground of the present 

 that we can tread with firm step on the solid ground of the future, 

 'the action of existing causes.' This interprets all that has been; 

 foretells all that is to be. The value of all facts is found in their rela- 

 tion to such interpretation and such prophecy. It is the function of 

 prophecy, as Dr. Wilhelm Ostwald has shown, which distinguishes the 



