RELATION OF SCIENCE TO HUMAN LIFE—SEDGWICK. 671 
men and nonscientific men, between scientific knowledge and non- 
scientific knowledge? The truth appears to lie here: Though it is 
true that all men possess knowledge, i. e., science, yet there are some 
men who make it their main business to concern themselves with some 
kind of knowledge, and especially with its increase, and to these men 
the term scientific has been technically applied. Now, the distinctive 
feature of these men, in virtue of which the term scientific is applied 
to them, is that they not only possess knowledge, but that they make 
it their business to add to knowledge, and it is this part of their busi- 
ness, if any, which justifies their being placed in a class apart from 
other possessors of knowledge. 
The men who make it their main business to add to knowledge may 
be divided into two classes, according to the motive which spurs them 
on: (1) There are those whose immediate object is to ameliorate the 
conditions of human life and to add to its pleasures; their motive is 
utility, and their immediate goal is within sight. Such are the great 
host of inventors, the pioneers in agriculture, in hygiene, preventive 
medicine, in social reform and in sound legislation which leads to 
social reform, and many other subjects. (2) There are those who pur- 
sue knowledge for its own sake without reference to its practical ap- 
plication. They are urged on by the desire to know by what has been 
called a divine curiosity. These men are the real pioneers of knowl- 
edge. It is their work which prepares the way for the practical man 
who watches and follows them. Without their apparently useless 
investigations, progress beyond the limits of the immediately useful 
would be impossible. We should have had no applied electricity, no 
spectrum analysis, no aseptic surgery, no preventive medicine, no 
anesthetics, no navigation of the pathless ocean. Sometimes the re- 
sults of the seeker after knowledge for its own sake are so unique and 
astounding that the whole of mankind stands spellbound before 
them, and renders them the same homage that the child does the tale 
of wonderful adventure; such is the case with the work on radium 
and radio-activity, which is at present fixing the attention of the 
whole civilized world. Sometimes the work is of a humbler kind, 
dealing apparently with trivial objects, and appealing in no way to 
the imagination or sense of the wonderful; such was the work which 
led to and formed the basis of that great generalization which has 
transformed man’s outlook on nature—the theory of organic evolution; 
such was the work which produced aseptic surgery and the great doc- 
trines of immunity and phagocytosis which have had such tremendous 
results in diminishing human pain. The temper of such men is a 
curious one; no material reward can be theirs, and, as a rule, but 
little fame. Yet mankind owes them a debt which can never be 
repaid. It is to these men that the word scientific has been specially 
applied, and with this justification—they have no other profession 
