SCIENCE AND PRACTICAL LIFE. 167 



What wonder, then, if these astonishing fruits of the tree of knowl- 

 edge are too often regarded by both friends and enemies as the be-all 

 and end-all of science ? What wonder if some eulogize, and others 

 revile, the new philosophy for its utilitarian ends and its merely mate- 

 rial triumphs ? 



In truth, the new philosophy deserves neither the praise of its 

 eulogists nor the blame of its slanderers. As I have pointed out, its 

 disciples were guided by no search after practical fruits, during the 

 great period, of its growth, and it reached adolescence without being 

 stimulated by any rewards of that nature. The bare enumeration of 

 the names of the men who were the great lights of science in the lat- 

 ter part of the eighteenth and the first decade of the nineteenth cent- 

 ury, of Herschel, of Laplace, of Young, of Fresnel, of Oersted, of 

 Cavendish, of Lavoisier, of Davy, of Lamarck, of Cuvier, of Jussieu, 

 of De Candolle, of Werner, and of Hutton, sufiices to indicate the 

 strength of physical science in the age immediately preceding that of 

 which I have t^ treat. But of which of these great men can it be 

 said, that their labors were directed to practical ends ? I do not call 

 to mind even an invention of j^ractical utility which we owe to any of 

 them, except the safety-lamp of Davy. Werner certainly paid atten- 

 tion to mining, and I have not forgotten James Watt. But, though 

 some of the most important of the improvements by which Watt con- 

 verted the steam-engine, invented long before his time, into the obe- 

 dient slave of man, were suggested and guided by his acquaintance 

 with scientific principles, his skill as a practical mechanician, and the 

 efficiency of Bolton's workmen, had quite as much to do with the reali- 

 zation of his projects. 



In fact, the history of physical science teaches (and we can not too 

 carefully take the lesson to heart) that the practical advantages, at- 

 tainable thi'ough its agency, never have been, and never will be, suffi- 

 ciently attractive to men inspired by the inborn genius of the inter- 

 preter of Nature, to give them courage to undergo the toils and make 

 the sacrifices which that calling requires from its votaries. That which 

 stirs their pulses is the love of knowledge and the joy of the discovery 

 of the causes of things sung by the old poets — the supreme delight of 

 extending the realm of law and order ever further toward the unat- 

 tainable goals of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, between 

 which our little race of life is run. In the course of this work, the 

 physical philosopher, sometimes intentionally, much more often un- 

 intentionally, lights upon something which proves to be of practical 

 value. Great is the rejoicing of those who are benefited thereby ; and, 

 for the moment, science is the Diana of all the craftsmen. But, even 

 while the cries of jubilation resound and this flotsam and jetsam of 

 the tide of investigation is being turned into the wages of workmen and 

 the wealth of capitalists, the crest of the wave of scientific investigation 

 is far away on its course over the illimitable ocean of the unknown. 



