1 1 2 BOTANY AND INTENSIVE CULTIVATION 



restrict its activities. Pure science is not required 

 to make statutory declaration beforehand that no 

 one will be a penny the richer if it succeed. There 

 are times and the present is such a time when 

 pure science does well to renew its touch with 

 national life; and this no less for its own sake 

 than for the sake of the nation. There would 

 seem to be no sanction for the opinion not infre- 

 quently expressed that all the knowledge which 

 science accumulates is worth having: that though 

 useless for the welfare of mankind it is and must 

 be useful to the mind of man. Apart altogether 

 from its social or commercial utility scientific 

 work, like any work of art, may be of a good or 

 bad, of a valuable or useless kind : a means of 

 access to new domains of knowledge or a blind 

 alley leading nowhere. The premisses and un- 

 proven assumptions on which a piece of scientific 

 work may rest are so numerous and so fallible that 

 although the facts ascertained in the course of the 

 enquiry may themselves be true, the enquiry may 

 advance knowledge not at all. For facts to be 

 of service to science must be discovered at the 

 right time and in the right relationship one to the 

 other. 



It follows therefore if these statements be 

 true that not all the kinds of investigation fashion- 

 able at a given epoch are necessarily of worth. 

 And, if this be true, it also follows that it behoves 

 the leaders in a particular science to confer with 



