62 SCIENCE IN THE LAST HALF CENTURY. 



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

 gists, 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 

 anj' rewards of that nature. The bare enumeration of the names of the 

 men who were the great lights of science in the latter part of the eight- 

 eenth and the first decade of the nineteenth century, of Herschel, of 

 Laplace, of Young, of Fresnel, of Oersted, of Cavendish, of Lavoisier, 

 of Davy, of Lamarck, of Cuvier, of Jussieu, of Decandolle, of Werner, 

 and of Hutton, suffices to indicate the strength of physical science in 

 the age immediately preceding that of which I have to treat. But of 

 which of these great men can it be said that his labors were directed 

 to practical ends *? I do not call to mind even an invention of practical 

 utility which we owe to any of them, except the safety-lamp of Davy. 

 Werner certainly paid attention to mining, and 1 have not forgotten 

 James Watt. But, though some of the most importantof the improve- 

 ments by which Watt converted the steam-engine, invented long before 

 his time, into the obedient slave of man, were suggested and guided by 

 his acquaintance with scientific principles, his skill as a practical mech- 

 anician and the efficiency of Bolton's workmen had quite as much to 

 do with the realization of his projects. 



LOVE OF KNOWLEDGE. 



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

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

 able through its agency, never have been, and never will be, sufficiently 

 attractive to men inspired by the inborn genius of the interi^reter of 

 nature, to give them courage to undergo the toils and make the sacri- 

 fices 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 jjoets; the supreme delight of extend- 

 ing the realm of law and order ever farther towards the unattainable 

 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 philos- 

 opher, sometimes intentionally, much more often unintentionally, 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 investi- 

 gation 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. 



SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY RECIPROCALLY DEPENDENT. 



Far be it from me to depreciate the value of the gifts of science to 

 practical life, or to cast a doubt upon the propriety of the course of ac- 



