10 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE IN THE CENTURY. 



of analysis, of dissection, of faithful drawing, is one 

 of the most effective factors in the evolution of 

 truthfulness ? Many will agree with Agassiz that 

 some training in natural science is one of the best 

 preparations a man can have for work in any depart- 

 ment of life where accurate carefulness and ad- 

 herence to the facts of the case means much. Long 

 ago Bacon said : " We should accustom ourselves to 

 things themselves," and this — to distinguish between 

 appearance and reality — is what the scientific mood 

 seeks after. 



It was Huxley who spoke of " that enthusiasm for 

 truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater 

 possession than much learning; a nobler gift than 

 the power of increasing knowledge." It is one of 

 the motive forces of scientific progress. 



If every virtue has its vice and every function its 

 disease, so danger may lurk in this precious posses- 

 sion, — a passion for facts. It may become a mania 

 for information and an intellectual intemperance. 

 Unskilful teaching or careless learning may result 

 in mere fat without muscle, or in the matter-of-fact 

 man — one of the most unscientific of persons — 

 who ignores one of the biggest of all facts, the reality 

 of ideas. 



Any mood may in extreme development become 

 vicious, and the passion for facts may become so pre- 

 dominant that it implies violence to emotional sanity 

 and disloyalty to the ideal of a full and healthy hu- 

 man life. Take an illustration from real life. The 

 great embryologist Von Baer once shut himself up in 

 his study when snow was upon the ground, and did 

 not come out again until the rye was in harvest. He 

 was filled, he tells us, with uncontrollable pathos 

 at the sight. " The laws of development may be 



