DESIRE TO KNOW ABOUT NATURE 3 



and sea, the truth, the knowledge of " that which is," of 

 the relation of these things to one another as cause and 

 effect and their action and influence on ourselves this 

 is the aim of science. To substitute real understanding 

 and the power of control of the surrounding world for 

 the misleading and cruelly harmful conceptions existing 

 in the minds of simple unskilled mankind this is the 

 daily achievement of science. 



2. The Desire to Know the World of Nature 



The practical value of science in securing the 

 happiness of human communities is not, however, the 

 reason which operates most strongly in exciting men and 

 women to give themselves to the cultivation and 

 improvement of this or that branch of it. A rich 

 banker one day was looking round the Natural History 

 Museum with me. It was his first visit. After a time 

 he said, " It's very fine ! wonderful ! But what's it all 

 for ? Where does the money come in ? That's what I 

 can't understand. Why does the Government spend 

 money on this if it don't lead to making money ? " I 

 tried to convince him that there exists in us all a divine 

 " curiosity," a desire to know regardless of profit or loss, 

 a thirst which we may cultivate and satisfy, in the full 

 assurance that whilst its satisfaction is a delight in itself, 

 we are all the while fulfilling the destiny of man, helping 

 in the conquest of Nature. My friend had apparently 

 lost that instinctive thirst which is the primary impulse 

 to the pursuit of science, that capacity for pleasure 

 which Robert Louis Stevenson truly notes in the words 

 of the child of his " Garland of Verse " : 



" The world is so full of a number of things, 

 I am sure we should all be as happy as kings ! " 



The existence of that little child and of numberless 



