190 GENERAL CONDITIONS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 



other substances have also given rise to a multitude of 

 useful applications. 



The intrinsic value of a scientific truth largely 

 depends upon its total amount of informative power, and 

 as each truth can only contain a definite quantity, it pro- 

 bably possesses a definite value. The total amount of 

 informative power contained in every such truth consists 

 of two parts, viz., that which we can perceive, and that 

 which is hidden, the known and the unknown ; and one 

 great reason why we are so little able to determine the 

 intrinsic value of truths, especially of newly-discovered 

 ones, is because the proportion wrapped up in a latent 

 state and incapable of being appreciated, is an indefinite 

 amount, and very much larger than that which is manifest. 



The apparent value of a scientific truth depends 

 upon the amount of informative power manifest in it ; and 

 this continually increases, because we are enabled, by the 

 application of knowledge and of intellectual processes, to 

 evolve continually more knowledge from it. For instance, 

 when the first fact of electro-magnetism was discovered, 

 its apparent value to ordinary persons was extremely 

 small, and only philosophers could guess that it was of 

 great intrinsic wortb, because they alone could perceive 

 that it implicitly contained great stores of future available 

 knowledge in a latent potential state ; but now that the 

 science of electro-magnetism has been evolved from it, 

 and it has been applied in electric telegraphs and other 

 ways useful to mankind, even ordinary persons begin to 

 perceive its great importance. 



The greater or less intrinsic value of a newly-discovered 

 truth is judged of by its nature. If we adopt as the 

 highest standard of importance that which conduces most 

 to the progress of civilisation and the happiness of man- 

 kind, the most important discoveries are not necessarily 



