THE APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE 183 



This tremendous instrument of research can be mastered, 

 this new way of thinking can be acquired, only by long 

 training and laborious exercise. It is not, or it ought not 

 to be, the academic student in the pure refined air of the 

 laboratory who makes the knowledge, and the hard- 

 handed and hard-headed worker who applies it to its 

 needs. The man who can make new knowledge is the 

 man, and the only man, to apply it. 



Pure and applied science are the roots and the branches 

 of the tree of experimental knowledge ; theory and 

 practice are inseparably interwoven, and cannot be torn 

 asunder without grave injury to both. The intellectual 

 and the material health of society depend on the main- 

 tenance of their close connexion. A few years ago there 

 was a tendency for true science to be confined to the 

 laboratory, for its students to become thin-blooded, 

 deprived of the invigorating air of industrial life, while 

 industry wilted from neglect. To-day there are perhaps 

 some signs of an extravagant reaction ; industrial 

 science receives all the support and all the attention, while 

 the universities, the nursing mothers of all science and 

 all learning, are left to starve. The danger of rushing 

 from one extreme to another will not be avoided until 

 there is a general consciousness of what science means, 

 both as a source of intellectual satisfaction and as a 

 means of attaining material desires. We cannot all be 

 it is not desirable that we all should be close students 

 of science ; but we can all appreciate in some measure 

 what are its aims, its methods, its uses. Science, like 

 art, should not be something extraneous, added as a 

 decoi the otlu r activities of existence ; it should 



be part of them, inspiring our most trivial actions as well 

 as our noblest thoughts. 



