SCIENCE AND PRACTICAL LIFE. 169 



knowledge simply because they crave for it. They have their weak- 

 nesses, their follies, their vanities, and their rivalries, like the rest of 

 the world ; but whatever by-ends may mar their dignity and impede 

 their usefulness, this chief end redeems them.* Nothing great in sci- 

 ence has ever been done by men, whatever their powers, in whom the 

 divine afflatus of the truth-seeker was wanting. Men of moderate ca- 

 pacity have done great things because it animated them ; and men of 

 great natural gifts have failed, absolutely or relatively, because they 

 lacked this one thing needful. 



To any one who knows the business of investigation practically, 

 Bacon's notion of establishing a company of investigators to work for 

 " fruits," as if the pursuit of knowledge were a kind of mining opera- 

 tion and only required well-directed picks and shovels, seems very 

 strange.f In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere 

 of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counselors, 

 but it is only in one or two of them. And, in scientific inquiry, at 

 any rate, it is to that one or two that we must look for light and guid- 

 ance. Newton said that he made his discoveries by "intending" his 

 mind on the subject ; no doubt truly. But to equal his success one 

 must have the mind which he " intended." Forty lesser men might 

 have intended their minds till they cracked, without any like result. 

 It would be idle either to affirm or to deny that the last half-century 

 has produced men of science of the caliber of Newton. It is sufficient 

 that it can show a few capacities of the first rank, competent not only 

 to deal profitably with the inheritance bequeathed by their scientific 

 forefathers, but to pass on to their successors physical truths of a 

 higher order than any yet reached by the human race. And if they 

 have succeeded as Newton succeeded, it is because they have sought 

 truth as he sought it, with no other object than the finding it. 



* Fresnel, after a brilliant career of discovery in some of the most difficult regions of 

 physico-mathematical science, died at thirty-nine years of age. The following passage of 

 a letter from him to Young (written in November, 1824), quoted by Whewell, so aptly 

 illustrates the spirit which animates the scientific inquirer that I may cite it : 



" For a long time that sensibility, or that vanity, which people call love of glory, is 

 much blunted in me. I labor much less to catch the suffrages of the public than to ob- 

 tain an inward approval which has always been the mental reward of my efforts. With- 

 out doubt I have often wanted the spur of vanity to excite me to pursue my researches in 

 moments of disgust and discouragement. But all the compliments which I have received 

 from MM. Arago, De Laplace, or Biot, never gave me so much pleasure as the discovery 

 of a theoretical truth or the confirmation of a calculation by experiment." 



f " Memorable exemple de I'impuissance des rechcrches collectives appliquees ^ la 

 decouverte des verites nouvolles ! " say3 one of the most distinguished of living French 

 savaiits, of the corporate chemical work of the old Academic des Sciences. (See Berthelot, 

 "Science et Philosophic," p. 201.) 



