FIRST PRINCIPLES 43 



if they were already ranged in neatly labelled bottles on his 

 shelves. He knows their formulae, their atomic weight and 

 specific heat, and much regarding their properties, before 

 he has made them, and whenever it may suit his purpose to 

 make them the steps of the process will not be sought for 

 tentatively and with misgiving, but followed with the assur- 

 ance that they must inevitably attain the desired result. 



These statements as to the power of science are mere 

 platitudes. We stop perhaps too frequently to wonder at 

 our own success in subjugating nature and the exceeding 

 rapidity of its recent advance. Yet advance brings us no 

 nearer to the end of our labours, for the more we know the 

 more we see of what remains to be known. Every problem 

 laid at rest gives birth to two new problems which did not 

 present themselves to the mind before. Anyone entering 

 the field now is assured of work to do, and of immense 

 physical resources to aid him in doing it. But probably the 

 attitude of mind of a recruit to science is, or should be, very 

 different now to that of the long army of fighters who have 

 gone before him. Here and there we may pick out from 

 amongst the pioneers of science a Cavendish, a Faraday, a 

 Robert Brown, whose ambition it was to know more of 

 things near at hand ; but the greater number took up their 

 work with anticipations which were less easily to be ful- 

 filled. To go back no farther than Huxley, or his favourite 

 model Descartes, the study of science was undertaken in the 

 hope of obtaining a wider view of the universe and a 

 clearer conception of what does or does not lie beyond, 

 "to learn how to distinguish truth from falsehood, in order 

 to be clear about my actions, and to walk sure-footedly in 

 this life." * No one nowadays can hope to gain a compre- 

 hensive view of science as a whole, still less to abstract from 

 his science lessons which will guide him in shaping his 



*" Methods and Results." Essays by T. H. Huxley, p. 168. A quota- 

 tion from Descartes' " Discours de la Methode pour bien conduire sa 

 Raison et chercher la Verite dans les Sciences." 



