THE UTILITY OF SCIENCE 239 



inventor possible. Thereafter, the inventor's 

 work aids the investigator in making new dis- 

 coveries to be utilized in their turn." 



It is quite plain from the history of Science 

 that the practical value of Science is in direct 

 proportion to the precision of scientific methods, 

 and that the most "theoretical" investigations 

 have often had practical results of extraordinary 

 magnitude. It is not merely that the theory 

 forms the foundations of the Science, there is 

 another reason. Scientific descriptions increase 

 in value as they become absolutely impersonal, 

 as they become perfectly precise, and especially 

 as they become condensed general formulae which 

 will be applicable to an infinite variety of par- 

 ticular situations. There is no doubt that the 

 quiet thinkers in the scientific cloisters are, like 

 the poets, the makers and shakers of the world. 



HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. Only the ex- 

 tremely ignorant can question the utility of, 

 let us say, the prolonged application of Greek 

 intellect to the laws of conic sections. Whether 

 we think of bridges or of projectiles, of the curves 

 of ships or of the rules of navigation, we must 

 think'; of conic sections. The rules of navigation, 

 for instance, are in part based on astronomy. 

 Kepler's Laws are foundation-stones of that 

 science, but Kepler discovered that Mars moves 

 in an ellipse round the sun in one of the foci by 



