THE FRUITS OF SCIENCE 25 



that both need wise cultivation. The nourishment 

 of the tree, its training and its pruning, have their 

 true counterparts in the development of science, 

 and in both cases the fruit comes as the reward 

 of skill and labour. This is the thing which is 

 hard to understand and yet is so important. The 

 fruits of science are first seen when they are brought 

 to market, and it is vaguely supposed that they 

 have been picked up somewhere and somehow in 

 the condition in which they appear. Perhaps they 

 were made by the man who carries the basket. 

 It is not realised that the fruit comes at the end of 

 a long process, and that even a little application 

 of science may be a result of many years of unseen 

 growth and labour. It is not even as simple to 

 develop scientific results as it is to grow fruit in 

 an orchard, because there are restrictions in the 

 former case which have no analogue in the latter. 

 The growth of science is not so much under our 

 command as the growth of a tree. 



We may change the analogy and think of 

 scientific research as an army advancing into an 

 unknown country, in which it is not possible to 

 see more than a step or two ahead; and the diffi- 

 culties are such that only certain lines of advance 

 are reasonably practicable. Progress is made step 

 by step along these lines, one discovery leading 

 to another. New roads can only be made as 

 branches from the old. Those who now march 

 forward can but follow the way as it opens out 



