SCIENCE FOR LIFE 19 



tinued activity of a kind of mind which has never been 

 common, which seeks after knowledge with more than 

 a passing love, which has vision as well as patience. 

 The lesson of history is clear : if any really big changes 

 are to come about, it is likely to be through discoveries 

 in Pure Science, and the priceless people are those who 

 have brains enough to be discoverers of Pure Science. 

 There is, of course, nothing but good in applying the 

 results and methods of Science to immediate difficulties 

 and limitations ; the danger is of a false valuation, of 

 ignoring the lesson of history that, even for practical 

 ends, it is theory that pays, and of diverting the real 

 discoverer from the quest of understanding. No 

 question arises as the role of inventors who devise some 

 useful application of a new knowledge which the dis- 

 coverers have established, but the danger is letting 

 inventors over-shadow discoverers. A thousand people 

 know of Marconi, for one who knows on whose shoulders 

 the Italian inventor nimbly and with perfect fairness 

 perched himself. Ten thousand people know of Edison, 

 for one who has heard of Willard Gibbs — one of the 

 greatest physicists of the nineteenth century. 



What, then, shall we say ? (1) The first-class makers 

 of first-class new knowledge are so few and far between 

 that nothing too much can be done for them. It is a 

 tragedy that a man with a first-class mind should be 

 hampered as regards his scientific pursuits by having 

 only a third-class purse. On the master-minds the 

 question of utility should never be allowed to intrude. 

 (2) As to the second-class and third-class makers of 



