64 SCIENCE IN THE LAST HALF CENTURY. 



chief end redeems them.* Nothing great in science has ever been done 



by men, whatever their powers, in whom the divine afflatus of the 



truth-seeker was wanting. Men of moderate capacity have done great 



things because it animated them 5 and men of great natural gifts have 



failed, absolutely or relatively, because they lacked this one thing 



needful. 



TRUE OBJECT OF RESEARCH. 



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

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

 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 guidance. 

 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 New- 

 ton succeeded, it is because they have sought truth as he sought it, with 

 no other object than the finding it. 



PROGRESS FROM 1837 TO 1887. 



I am conscious that in undertaking to give even the briefest sketch 

 of the progress of jjhysical science, in all its branches, during the last 



* 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 pas- 

 sage 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 sulfrages of the public than 

 to obtain an inward approval which has always been the mental reward of my eflorts. 

 Without doubt I have often wanted the spur of vanity to excite me to pursue my re- 

 searches 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 pleas- 

 ure as the discovery of a theoretical truth or the confirmation of a calculation by ex- 

 periment." 



t "Memorable exemple de I'impuissance des recherches collectives appllqu6es a la 

 d6couverte des v^rit^s nouvelles," says one of the most distinguished of living French 

 8avant8, of the corporate chemical work of the old Academic des Sciences. (See Ber- 

 thelot, Science et Philosophic, p. 201.) 



