THE ELECTRIC LIGHT 473 



cian, whose object is mainly industrial. It would be easy, 

 and probably in many cases true, to say that the one 

 wants to gain knowledge, while the other wishes to make 

 money; but I am persuaded that the mechanician not in- 

 frequently merges the hope of profit in the love of his 

 work. Members of each of these classes are sometimes 

 scornful toward those of the other. There is, for exam- 

 ple, something superb in the disdain with which Cuvier 

 hands over the discoveries of pure science to those who 

 apply them: "Your grand practical achievements are only 

 the easy application of truths not sought with a practical 

 intent — truths which their discoverers pursued for their 

 own sake, impelled solely by an ardor for knowledge. 

 Those who turned them into practice could not have dis- 

 covered them, while those who discovered them had 

 neither the time nor the inclination to pursue them to 

 a practical result. Your rising workshops, your peopled 

 colonies, your vessels which furrow the seas; this abun- 

 dance, this luxury, this tumult" — "this commotion," he 

 would have added, were he now alive, "regarding the 

 electric light" — "all come from discoverers in Science, 

 though all remain strange to them. The day that a dis- 

 covery enters the market they abandon it; it concerns 

 them no more." 



In writing thus, Cuvier probably did not sufficiently 

 take into account the reaction of the applications of science 

 upon science itself. The improvement of an old instru- 

 ment or the invention of a new one is often tantamount to 

 an enlargement and refinement of the senses of the scien- 

 tific investigator. Beyond this, the amelioration of the 

 community is also an object worthy of the best efforts of 

 the human brain. Still, assuredly it is well and wise for 



