THE SPIRIT AND METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY, igg 



is the ability of the child to carry its nurse, and this it can only attain 

 to through the discipline of toil — toil which at first conceals itself un- 

 der the gracious guise of sports, gymnastics, and adventures, and after- 

 ward takes the shape of experimental failures and useless constructions, 

 but all as free, untutored, and original as the laughing, wasteful, and 

 ungovernable pranks of Nature. But I have followed long enough, 

 perhaps you will think too long} this train of thought. Let me sug- 

 gest another. 



It is a familiar fact that great discoveries come at long intervals, 

 brought by specially commissioned and highly endowed messengers, 

 while a per^Detual procession of humbler servants of Nature amve with 

 gifts of lesser moment, but equally genuine, curious, and interesting 

 novelties. The excitement of the pageant incapacitates us for reason- 

 ing rightly on its meaning. From what unknown land does all this 

 wealth of information come ? Who are these bearers of it ? and who 

 intrusted each with his particular burden, which he carries aloft as if 

 it deserved exclusive admiration ? Why do those who bring the best 

 things walk so seriously and modestly along, as if they were in the 

 performance of a sacred duty for which they scarcely esteem them- 

 selves worthy ; while those who have little to show, or things of infe- 

 rior or doubtful value, strut and grimace magnificently, as if they felt 

 themselves the especial favorites of Nature, push to the front, speak 

 loudly to the multitude, and evidently deem themselves entitled to 

 uncommon honors ? 



In this procession of science, in this interminable show of discov- 

 ery, two facts arrest attention : first, the eager gaze of expectation 

 which the crowd of lookers-on direct toward the quarter from which 

 the procession comes, and their unaccountable indifference to what has 

 already passed ; and, secondly, the wonderful disappearance, the more 

 or less sudden vanishing out of the very hands of the carriers, of a 

 large majority of the facts and theories of which they make so pomp- 

 ous an exposure ; few of them, however, seeming to be aware that 

 thereby they have lost their right to participate in the pageant, and 

 should retire from it into the throng of spectators, at least until good 

 fortune should take pity on them, and drop some new trifle at their 

 feet to soothe their wounded vanity. 



You will not suspect me of depreciating the value of any real dis- 

 covery, be it merely the finding of a Californian bird on the shore of 

 Massachusetts Bay, or detecting with the naked eye the blazing of a 

 variable star before any telescope had noticed it, or finding some 

 Hadrosaurus bones in a New Jersey marl-pit, or a Paradoxides at the 

 Quincy quarries ? Such accidents have all the importance of trumpet- 

 notes sounding to boots and saddle. But, after all, the trumpeter is 

 only a trumpeter, although he may imagine himself the colonel of the 

 regiment or a general in the army ; and, indeed, it has happened that 

 to such accidents Science has owed some of her best physicists and 



