UTILITARIAN SCIENCE 9 



It is the mission of science to disclose so far as it goes the 

 real nature of the universe. Its function is to eliminate, wherever it 

 be found, the human equation. By methods of precision of thought 

 and instruments of precision of observation and experiment, science 

 seeks to make our knowledge of the small, the distant, the invisible, 

 the mysterious, as accurate, as practical, as our knowledge of com- 

 mon things. Moreover, it seeks to make our knowledge of common 

 things accurate and precise, that this accuracy and precision may 

 be translated into action. For the ultimate end of science as well as 

 its initial impulse is the regulation of human conduct. Seeing true 

 means thinking right. Right thinking means right action. Greater 

 precision in action makes higher civilization possible. Lack of pre- 

 cision in action is the great cause of human misery ; for misery is the 

 inevitable result of wrong conduct. " Still men and nations reap as 

 they have strewn." 



A classic thought in the history of applied science is expressed in 

 these words of Huxley : " There can be no alleviation of the sufferings 

 of man except in absolute veracity of thought and action and a re- 

 solute facing of the world as it is." " The world as it is " is the pro- 

 vince of science. " The God of the things as they are is the God of the 

 highest heaven." And as to the sane man, the world as it is is glori- 

 ous, beautiful, harmonious, and divine, so will science, our tested 

 and ordered knowledge of it, be the inspiration of art, poetry, and 

 religion. 



Pure science and utilitarian science merge into each other at every 

 point. They are one and the same thing. Every new truth can be 

 used to enlarge human power or to alleviate human suffering. There 

 is no fact so remote as to have no possible bearing on human utility. 

 Every new conception falls into the grasp of that higher philan- 

 thropy which rests on the comprehension of the truths of science. 

 For science is the flower of human altruism. No worker in science 

 can stand alone. None counts for much who tries to do so. He must 

 enter into the work of others. He must fit his thought to theirs. 

 He must stand on the shoulders of the past, and must crave the help 

 of the future. The past has granted its assistance to the fullest 

 degree of the most perfect altruism. The future will not refuse; and, 

 in return, whatever knowledge it can take for human uses, it will 

 choose in untrammeled freedom. The sole line which sets off utili- 

 tarian science lies in the limitation of human strength and of human 

 life. The single life must be given to a narrow field, to a single strand 

 of truth, following it wherever it may lead. Some must teach, some 

 must investigate, some must adapt to human uses. It is not often 

 that these functions can be united in the same individual. It is not 

 necessary that they should be united; for art is long, though life is 

 short, and for the next thousand years science will be still in its 



