SCIENCE AND SOCIETY 9 



of animals, make patent to every one the fact that this 

 extraordinary number of workers accounts for the 

 appearance of such men as Helmholtz, Claude Bernard, 

 Du Bois-Reymond, and others, beside whom botanical 

 physiologists can as yet cite not a single name. This 

 wealth of equipment, and especially the wealth of mental 

 energy which has been expended upon the subject, has 

 conditioned the success of animal physiology as a science, 

 and may be regarded as an extenuating circumstance for 

 the backwardness of the physiology of plants. 



Happily, however, during recent years a fresh aspect 

 of botany has been discovered : life has begun to attract 

 attention which hitherto was exclusively devoted to 

 form. The public has realised at the same time that 

 the physiology of plants tends to an end not merely 

 useful, but even necessary, to society ; that it is served 

 by this science in the same way as by other sciences, 

 which have already gained their civil rights. 



I must explain myself. I do not wish it to be under- 

 stood from what I have said that I expect science to 

 aspire exclusively to utilitarian ends, as if I found its 

 highest sanction in its practical tendency. On the 

 contrary this practical tendency, which characterises 

 the infancy of a science, cannot and must not be its aim. 

 Throughout the development of a pure science its 

 results find application spontaneously. The develop- 

 ment of a science can be determined only by the logical 

 sequence of its achievements, never by the external 

 pressure of necessity. Scientific thought, like every 

 other form of mental activity, can work only under 

 conditions of absolute liberty. Oppressed by the weight 

 of utilitarian demands, science can produce but pitiable 

 artificial work, after the same kind as any meagre and 

 mechanical work of art fashioned under similar circum- 

 stances. We may ransack the archives of any science 

 and yet find scarcely one daring idea, one brilliant 

 generalisation which owed its origin to its application ; 



