752 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Leonardo da Vinci, who, in addition to his immortal art-creations,, 

 was a physicist of high rank, yet he was as such so far ahead of 

 his time that the examjile can not be cited as evidence that the 

 rise of science conditions also the rise of art. Michael Angelo 

 died on the same day that Galileo was born. In the common emi- 

 nence of art and science at the beginning of this century we see 

 only a coincidence. Art has since then continued at best at the 

 same height, while science is still careering on its course of irre- 

 pressible victory. 



The two lines are in fact so different that it is easily to be seen 

 that science can help art and art science only externally. " Na- 

 ture," said Goethe, addressing Eckermann, without perceiving 

 how sharply his words might be applied to a side of his own 

 scientific efforts — " Nature knows no pastime ; she is always true, 

 always earnest, always severe ; she is always right, and faults and 

 mistakes are always man's."* In order adequately to perceive 

 the correctness of this expression, one must be accustomed, when 

 he applies his own hand to work as an experimenter or ob- 

 server, to look into the inexorable face of Nature, and, we might 

 almost say, to take upon himself the immense responsibility that 

 is involved in the determination of even the most insignificant 

 fact. What happens at this moment, under these circumstances, 

 will also happen, under the same circumstances, for a negatively 

 endless time, and will likewise happen after a positively endless 

 time ; this is the pregnant significance of every rightly interpreted 

 experiment. Only the matliematician, whose work is more nearly 

 allied to that of the experimental investigator than we are used 

 to conceive, can oppose eternally inviolable laws to the same feel- 

 ing of responsibility. Sworn witnesses before the tribunal of 

 reality, they both strive after knowledge of the world as it is, 

 within the limits imposed upon us by the nature of our intellect. 

 For this painful pressure under which he labors, the investigator 

 is compensated by the knowledge that even the least of his 

 achievements is a step forward above the highest stage reached 

 by his greatest predecessors ; that it may contain the germ of 

 immensely important theoretical knowledge and practical achieve- 

 ments, as Wollaston's lines in the spectrum contained the germ of 

 spectrum analysis; that such a prize invites not only the genius 

 raised up by Nature, but also the conscientious industry of the 

 moderately gifted ; and that science, bestowing upon the human 

 mind the mastery of Nature, is the ruling organ of civilization : 

 that without it there never has been a true civilization ; and that 

 without it civilization, together with art and its works, might 

 any day sink again hopelessly, as they did on the extinction of 

 the ancient world. 



* Gespriiche mit Goethe, etc. Leipsic, 1836, vol. ii, p. 68 (1829). 



