130 



who had maintained that science pursued without a practical 

 end was merely building castles in the air. 



Darwin's reply seemed to him unanswerable: 

 " I rather demur to one sentence of yours," he said — " viz. 

 * However delightful any scientific pursuit may be, yet, if it 

 should be wholly unapplied, it is of no more use than building 

 castles in the air.' Would not your hearers infer from this that 

 the practical use of each scientific discovery ought to be immediate 

 and obvious to make it worthy of admiration ? What a beautiful 

 instance chloroform is of a discovery made from purely scientific 

 researches, afterwards coming almost by chance into practical 

 use ! For myself I would, however, take higher ground, for I 

 believe there exists, and I feel within me, an instinct for truth, or 

 knowledge or discovery, of something of the same nature as the 

 instinct of virtue, and that our having such an instinct is reason 

 enough for scientific researches without any practical results 

 Êver ensuing from them." ^ 



Darwin here gave the real motive for research, and they 

 would notice that when the followers of the more fundamental 

 sciences, Physics and Chemistry, began to think of practical 

 commercial uses, the science of their investigations dropped to 

 another and a lower level. He expected that they had heard of 

 the terms which had been suggested for the different degrees in 

 the attainment of inaccuracy — how there were liars, liars with an 

 uncomplimentary adjective, and " expert witnesses " (laughter). 

 If that were true— even in the least degree true — it meant of 

 course that the scientific spirit was incompatible with the quali- 

 ties required in an expert witness. He dwelt on these facts 

 because he thought that Entomology stood out as the one science 

 in which a practical application was, in his experience, without 

 an injurious effect upon investigation. In Entomology, scientific 

 inquiries of all kinds were going on for the purpose of helping 

 mankind, but in spite of the application their researches could 

 still be conducted on purely scientific lines ; and he did not know 

 of any other science for which this could be said so truly as it 

 could for Entomology. If this opinion were sound, it followed 

 that our science occupied a high position in the scale of human 



^ More Leiters of Charles Darwin, London, 1903, vol. i., p. 61. Letter 

 dated April ist, 1848. 



