238 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



themselves to an environment more or less differ- 

 ent from that of the existing profession; they 

 could go beyond its processes, its formulae, and 

 its facts, and develop new ones. Their knowl- 

 edge of method and their powers of observation 

 enabled them to supply new needs, to answer to 

 the call when there was a demand, not for old 

 knowledge, but for trained brains." . . . "The 

 only sort of technical education the nation ought 

 to trouble about is teaching people to see and 

 think." . . . "What we want are trained brains, 

 scouts in all fields, and not a knowledge of facts 

 and processes crammed into a wider range of 

 untrained minds." It comes to this: that, on 

 the whole, the deeper and more difficult studies, 

 which stretch our brains most, are of much more 

 value, even technically, than what are called 

 "useful facts." 



In an interesting address on "The Debt of 

 the World to Pure Science," Prof. J. J. Stephen- 

 son points out that the fundamental importance 

 of abstruse research receives too little consider- 

 ation in our time, except, of course, from those 

 who really know. The practical side of life is 

 all-absorbent; and it is forgotten that "the foun- 

 dation of industrial advance was laid by workers 

 in pure science, for the most part ignorant of 

 utility and caring little about it." . . . "The 

 investigator takes the first step and makes the 



