178 THE GROWTH OF SCIENCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



what a strict and. because strict, helpful schoolmistress does Nature 

 make herself to him! Under her care ever^^ inquiry, whether it bring 

 the inquirer to a happy issue or seem to end in naught, trains him for 

 the next effort. She so orders her wa^^s that each act of obedience to 

 her makes the next act easier for him, and step by step she leads him 

 on toward that perfect obedience which is complete mastery. 



Indeed, when we reflect on the potenc}^ of the discipline of scientific 

 inquir}' we cease to wonder at the progress of scientific knowledge. 

 The results actuall}" gained seem to fall so far short of what under such 

 guidance might have been expected to have been gathered in that we 

 are fain to conclude that science has called to follow her, for the most 

 part, the poor in intellect and the wayward in spirit. Had she called 

 to her service the many acute minds who have wasted their strength 

 struggling in vain to solve hopeless problems, or who have turned 

 their energies to things other than the increase of knowledge; had 

 she called to her service the many just men who have walked straight 

 without the need of a rod to guide them, how nuich greater than it 

 has been would have been the progress of science, and how many false 

 teachings would the wf)rld have been spared ! To men of science 

 themselves, when they consider their favored lot, the achievements of 

 the past should serve not as a boast, but as a reproach. 



If there be an}' truth in what I have been urging, that the pursuit 

 of scientific inquiry is itself a training of special potency, giving 

 strength to the feeble and keeping in the path those who are inclined 

 to stray, it is obvious that the material gains of science, great as they 

 may be, do not make up all the good which science brings or may 

 bring to man. We especially, perhaps, in these later days, through 

 the rapid development of the physical sciences, are too apt to dwell 

 on the material gains alone. As a child in its infancy looks upon its 

 mother only as a giver of good things, and does not learn till in after 

 days how she was also showing her love by carefully training it in the 

 wa}' it should go, so we, too, have thought too much of the gifts of 

 science, overlooking her power to guide. 



Man does not live by bread alone, and science brings him more than 

 bread. It is a great thing to make two blades of grass grow where 

 before one alone grew; but it is no less great a thing to help a man to 

 come to a just conclusion on the questions with which he has to deal. 

 We ma}' claim for science that while she is doing the one she miiy be 

 so used as to do the other also. The dictum just quoted, that science 

 is organized common sense, may be read as meaning that the common 

 problems of life which common people have to solve are to be solved 

 by the same methods by which the man of science solves his special 

 problems. It follows that the training which does so much for him 

 may be looked to as promising to do much for them. Such aid can 

 come from science on two conditions onl}'. In the first place, this her 

 influence must be acknowledged; she must be duly recognized as a 



