NATURAL SCIENCE TO GENERAL SCIENCE. 25- 



only the feeblest forces, and could not be detected except by the 

 most delicate apparatus. Had they been neglected, on the 

 ground that the investigation of them promised no immediate 

 practical result, we should now be ignorant of the most import- 

 ant and most interesting of the links between the various forces 

 of nature. When young Galileo, then a student at Pisa, noticed 

 one day during divine service a chandelier swinging backwards 

 and forwards, and convinced himself, by counting his pulse, that 

 the duration of the oscillations was independent of the arc 

 through which it moved, who could know that this discovery 

 would eventually put it in our power, by means of the pendulum, 

 to attain an accuracy in the measurement of time till then 

 deemed impossible, and would enable the storm-tossed seaman 

 in the most distant oceans to determine in what degree of longi- 

 tude he was sailing 1 



Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate 

 practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in 

 vain. All that science can achieve is a perfect knowledge and a 

 perfect understanding of the action of natural and moral forces. 

 Each individual student must be content to find his reward in- 

 rejoicing over new discoveries, as over new victories of mind 

 over reluctant matter, or in enjoying the aasthetic beauty of a 

 well-ordered field of knowledge, where the connection and the 

 filiation of every detail is clear to the mind, and where all 

 denotes the presence of a ruling intellect ; he must rest satisfied 

 with the consciousness that he too has contributed something to 

 the increasing fund of knowledge on which the dominion of man 

 over all the forces hostile to intelligence reposes. He will, 

 indeed, not always be permitted to expect from his fellow -men 

 appreciation and reward adequate to the value of his work. It 

 is only too true that many a man to whom a monument ha* 

 been erected after his death would have been delighted to receive 

 during his lifetime a tenth part of the money .spent in doing 

 honour to his memory. At the same time, we must acknowledge- 

 that the value of scientific discoveries is now far more fully recog- 

 nised than formerly by public opinion, and that instances of the 

 authors of great advances in science starving in obscurity have 



