ADDRESSES 287 



of facts that stable law depends, and although we can not 

 always see the immediate practical value of the addition 

 of a new fact to the fund of knowledge, still no one can ever 

 tell how much vital importance is hidden in it. The boy 

 dallying with the steam issuing from his mother's teapot 

 established the fact of its condensation, and forthwith be- 

 came possible its application to all the tremendous enginery 

 of modern science. Nor should a fact be despised because 

 of its apparent triviality. The great father and founder of 

 fruitful investigation, Lord Bacon, says: "The eye of the 

 understanding is like the eye of the sense : for as you may 

 see great objects through small crannies or levels, so you 

 may see great axioms of nature through small and contemp- 

 tible instances." 



Not a single physical science can be named that has not 

 been built up by the labors of men who were seeking for 

 truth while those very labors were considered puerile and 

 ridiculous by mere utilitarians. Every scientific truth, it 

 has been aptly said, has to pass through three initial stages 

 before it can be firmly established : first, that of denial and 

 ridicule by the world; second, that of acceptance; and third, 

 that of calm assumption that it has always been so. We are 

 told that Pythagoras, when he discovered that the square 

 of the hypotenuse was equal to the sum of the squares of the 

 other two sides, offered up a hecatomb, in grateful recog- 

 nition of what had been vouchsafed him, since which time 

 whenever a scientific truth has been discovered the oxen 

 have always bellowed. The best scientific results of the 

 present day which have not yet borne fruit — the ques- 

 tions that engage the attention of our scientists — are 

 recounted with the same sneers and ridicule by those who 



