THE SPIRIT AND METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY. 203 



on the unknown, and futile to imagine that we can advance in science 

 ourselves, or assist in its advancement in the world. It is that tedious, 

 costly, and fatiguing process of laying a good foundation which no 

 eye is ever to see, for a house to be built thereon for safety and en- 

 joyment, for public uses or for monumental beauty. It is the labor of 

 a week to be paid for on Saturday night. It is the slow recruiting, 

 arming, drilling, victualing, and transporting of an entire army to 

 secure victory in one short battle. It is the burden of dead-weight 

 which every great discoverer has had to carry for years and years, 

 unknown to the world at large, before the world was electrified by his 

 appearance as its genius. Let us examine it more closely : it will re- 

 pay our scrutiny. Those of you who have been more or less success- 

 fully at work all your lives may get some satisfaction from the retro- 

 spect, and those who have commenced careers should hear what dead- 

 work means, what its uses are, how indispensable it is, how honorable 

 it is, and what stores of health and strength and happiness it reserves 

 for them. 



My propositions, then, are these : 1. That, without a large amount 

 of this dead-work, there can be no discovery of what is rightly called 

 a scientific truth. 2. That, without a large amount of dead-work on 

 the part of a teacher of science, he will fail in his efforts to impart true 

 science to his scholars. 3. That, without a large amount of dead- 

 work, no professional expert can properly serve, much less inform and 

 command, his clients or employers. 4. That nothing but an habitual 

 performance of dead- work can keep the scientific judgment in a safe 

 and sound condition to meet emergencies, or prevent it from falling 

 more or less rapidly into decrepitude ; and, 5. That in the case of 

 highly organized thinkers, disposed or obliged to exercise habitually 

 the creative powers of the imagination, or to exhaust the will-power in 

 frequently recurring decisions of difficult and doubtful questions, dead- 

 work and plenty of it is their only salvation ; nay, the most delicious 

 and refreshing recreation ; a panacea for disgust, discouragement, and 

 care ; an elixir vitge ; a fountain of perpetual youth. 



In expanding these propositions, I would illustrate them in some 

 such homely ways as should make them seem near and familiar prin- 

 ciples of conduct ; and of course I can only do this out of the expe- 

 rience of my own life, and from observation of what has happened in 

 the limited sphere of one department of scientific inquiry ; but that 

 should suffice, seeing that work is work, and science science, however 

 various may be minds and their pursuits. 



First, then, is it so that scientific truths can not be discovered with- 

 out a large amount of preliminary dead-work ? Surely no one in this 

 assembly doubts it who has established even one original theory for 

 himself, or won for it the suffrages of judges capable of weighing 

 evidence. Now, the immense disproportion in numbers between theo- 

 ries broached and theories accepted is the best proof we eould have, 



