SCIENCE FOR LIFE 21 



improves and creates occupations. Even the great 

 discoverer is not likely to impair Ms genius by being 

 something of a citizen ; and to those of humbler rank 

 it gives a spice to work to know that it may perhaps be 

 of practical use to mankind. Some people speak as if 

 it was almost a taint in a piece of work to have obvious 

 utility ; but sounder sense is talked by some of the 

 discoverers themselves ; thus Professor W. H. Bragg 

 writes : *' Pure Science may be developed by itself, but 

 it is the gainer if its workers are alive to the inspiration 

 which is to be found in watching its application." 



Perhaps the matter may be put in another way by 

 distinguishing between end and motive, for several 

 great discoverers have admitted that in the background 

 of their minds there was ever the conviction that Science 

 is for the relief of man's estate as well as for the glory 

 of God. Thus one of the prominent physicists of the 

 Kelvin period. Professor Henry A. Rowland, in an address 

 on " The Highest Aim of the Physicist," writes that while 

 the investigator " strives to understand the Universe 

 on account of the intellectual pleasure derived from the 

 pursuit," he is upheld in his work by the conviction 

 that " the study of Nature's secrets is the ordained 

 method by which the greatest good and happiness 

 shall finally come to the human race." Bacon said the 

 same in speaking of the aim of Salomon's House in the 

 New Atlantis : — " The end of our foundation is the 

 knowledge of causes and the secret motions of things ; 

 and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire to the 

 effecting of all things possible." 



