26 ON THE RELATION OF 



Taecome rarer and rarer. On the contrary, the governments and 

 peoples of Europe have, as a rule, admitted it to be their duty 

 -to recompense distinguished achievements in science by appro- 

 priate appointments or special rewards. 



The sciences have then, in this respect, all one common aim, 

 to establish the supremacy of intelligence over the world: 

 while the moral sciences aim directly at making the resources of 

 intellectual life more abundant and more interesting, and seek 

 to separate the pure gold of truth from alloy, the physical 

 sciences are striving indirectly towards the same goal, inasmuch 

 as they labour to make mankind more and more independent of 

 the material restraints that fetter their activity. Each student 

 works in his own department, he chooses for himself those tasks 

 for which he is best fitted by his abilities and his training. 

 But each one must be convinced that it is only in connection 

 with others that he can further the great work, and that therefore 

 he is bound, not only to investigate, but to do his utmost to 

 make the results of his investigation completely and easily 

 accessible. If he does this, he will derive assistance from others, 

 and will in his turn be able to render them his aid. The annals 

 .of science abound in evidence how such mutual services have 

 been exchanged, even between departments of science apparently 

 most remote. Historical chronology is essentially based on 

 astronomical calculations of eclipses, accounts of which are pre- 

 served in ancient histories. Conversely, many of the important 

 data of astronomy for instance, the invariability of the length 

 of the day, and the periods of several comets I'est upon ancient 

 histories 1 notices. Of late years, physiologists, especially Briicke, 

 have actually undertaken to draw up a complete system of all 

 the vocables that can be produced by the organs of speech, and to 

 base upon it propositions for an universal alphabet, adapted to 

 all human languages. Thus physiology has entered the service 

 -of comparative philology, and has already succeeded in account- 

 ing for many apparently anomalous substitutions, on the ground 

 that they are governed, not as hitherto supposed, by the laws of 

 euphony, but by similarity between the movements of the mouth 

 that produce them. Again, comparative philology gives us 



