488 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



be grave or gay, moral or immoral, social or unsocial, keen or 

 visionary — in short, he may exemplify any trait of human nature, 

 except the traits of ignorance and stupidity. He must be intelli- 

 gent and educated, methodical and exact; apart from these quali- 

 fications he may resemble any other man, chosen from any other 

 vocation. Indeed, his nearest analogue is the so-called man of busi- 

 ness, and the chief distinction between the two is that one deals 

 with unfamiliar, the other with familiar things. 



The direct tendency of the scientific training is to develop as 

 fully as possible the positive traits which have been mentioned. 

 Each science is a body of systematic, well-organized knowledge, with 

 clear fundamental principles and distinct outlines. The study of 

 science is a continual discouragement of obscurity or vagueness; it 

 is a discipline in the statement and solution of definite problems, 

 and it trains one to see things as they are, apart from all irrele- 

 vancies. The technicalities of science, so bewildering to the lay- 

 man, are merely aids to exactness, avoidances of circumlocution — in 

 short, they are practical devices whereby labor is saved. Economy 

 of effort is one of the features in which the scientific training excels. 



The results of such a training vary, of course, with the indi- 

 vidual, and depend upon his personal peculiarities. A broad man 

 is broadened by it; a narrow man shuts himself up within the limits 

 of a specialty. To some extent specialization is necessary, but 

 there is a wide difference between the man who sees only his own 

 province and one who realizes its relations to other fields. The 

 same distinction is found in commercial life, and with the same re- 

 sults. The specialist in money, in stocks, in iron, or in cotton may 

 be just as narrow as the specialist in stars, or reactions, or insects, 

 and know little or nothing of any subject outside his own. Neither 

 narrowness nor breadth of view is monopolized by any vocation. 

 The mere fact that men of science rarely devote their attention 

 to accumulating wealth does not prove them to be unpractical. 

 They are not, as a rule, careless or thriftless in money matters; 

 they are as likely to handle their fijiancial affairs intelligently as 

 any one else, but their main business lies in other directions. If 

 seldom a millionaire, the man of science is still more seldom a bank- 

 rupt. In wild speculation the so-called practical man takes the lead, 

 and anything which bears the trade mark of electricity, from the 

 electrical refining of sugar to the extraction of gold from sea water, 

 can secure from otherwise shrewd financiers the support which a 

 worker in science would contemptuously refuse to give. A few 

 years ago the would-be rain-makers obtained the money for their 

 experiments from men of business, and from Congress even, in spite 

 of advice based upon scientific knowledge, and failure was the in- 



