THE EL EC TRIG LIGHT. 685 
electric light seems so cool. It is this temperature that 
renders the proportion of luminous to non-luminous heat 
greater in the electric light than in our brightest flames. 
The electric light, moreover, requires no air to sustain it. 
It glows in the most perfect air vacuum. Its light and 
heat are therefore not purchased at the expense of the 
vitalizing constituent of the atmosphere. 
Two orders of minds have been implicated in the develop- 
ment of this subject; first, the investigator and discoverer, 
whose object is purely scientific, and who cares little for 
practical ends; secondly, the practical mechanician, whose 
object is mainly industrial. It would be easy, and prob- 
ably in many cases true to say that the one wants to gain 
knowledge, while the other wishes to make money; but I 
am persuaded that the mechanician not unfrequently 
merges the hope of profit in the love of his work. Mem- 
bers of each of these classes are sometimes scornful toward 
those of the other. There is, for example, something- 
superb in the disdain with which Cuvier hands over the 
discoveries of pure science to those who apply them: 
" Your grand practical achievements are only the easy 
application of truths not sought with a practical intent 
truths which their discoverers pursued for their own sake, 
impelled solely by an ardor for knowledge. Those who 
turned them into practice could not have discovered them, 
while those who discovered them had neither the time nor 
the inclination to pursue them to a practical result. Your 
rising workshops, your peopled colonies, your vessels which 
furrow the seas; this abundance, this luxury, this tumult," 
" this commotion/' he would have added, were he now 
alive, " regarding the electric light" ''all come from 
discoveries in science, though all remain strange to them. 
The day that a discovery enters the market they abandon 
it; it concerns them no more." 
In writing thus, Cuvier probably did not sufficiently 
take into account the reaction of the applications of 
science upon science itself. The improvement of an old 
instrument or the invention of a new one is often 
tantamount to an enlargement and refinement of the senses 
of the scientific investigator. Beyond this, the amelio- 
ration of the community is also an object worthy of the 
best efforts of the human brain. Still, assuredly it is vyell 
and wise for a nation to bear in mind that those practical 
