THE CULTURE OF THE SCIENTIFIC MOOD. 129 
development,” he wrote, “may be discovered this year or 
many years hence—by me or by others—what matters it ?— 
it is surely folly to sacrifice for this the joy of life which 
nothing can replace.” J cannot well translate the pathos 
of the simple German words, but he was a very sincere and 
noble man, and his words ring true. Life is not for science ; 
but science is for the development of life. 
These are days of popularising in magazine article and 
lecture platform—and much of this is justifiable and 
healthy—but the sin easily besets us of depreciating the 
dignity of a fact. 
I would therefore note, at the risk of triteness, that a 
passion for facts also implies seriousness, a “reverence for 
what is beneath,” in Goethe’s words. It implies a respect 
for facts when one gets them. 
Though we need not be always scientific—for which we 
are truly thankful—we must be scientific when we are 
definitely proposing to be scientific. We cannot play at 
the scientific mood. 
“Science,” Bacon said, “is not a terrace for a wandering 
and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair 
prospect.” 
What I mean by saying that we need not be always 
scientific is simply that the scientific mood is sometimes 
unnatural and irrelevant. To botanise upon our mother’s 
grave is the classic illustration, but I may refer also to 
the medical man’s discovery that Botticelli’s ‘ Venus,’ in 
the Uffizi at Florence, is suffering from consumption, and 
should not be riding across the sea in an open shell, 
seantily clad. 
CAUTIOUSNESS. 
Following from the passion for facts, there is a second 
characteristic of the scientific mood, namely, cautiousness, 
or distrust of finality and dogmatism of statement. 
Scotsmen have done well for the advancement of science— 
they stand, I believe, far above the average in the 19th 
century, perhaps this is in part because they are so ‘ canny,’ 
