2 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



endless impressions which for the first time, perhaps, make 

 him conscious of the strength and greatness of human energy. 

 Pure intellect, he feels, has conceived marvels, and unerring 

 hands have made them realities. Science, he feels, is in 

 possession of divine principles and laws to which human 

 labour has given a practical application in ways so unexpected 

 and multifarious, that imagination itself is powerless to 

 embrace them in their aggregate. From the gigantic 

 machinery of the factory to the delicate apparatus of the 

 physicist, from the resistless engine of destruction to the 

 minute instrument of surgery, every one of the ten thousand 

 things shown reveals the presence of an enchanter and that 

 enchanter, the man of science. And the admirer asks : Whence 

 comes he ? Who gave him birth ? Who trained him ? 



To this three-fold query these pages supply the answer. 



This, then, is a plain inquiry. It has nothing to do 

 with complicated theories. It deals with matter-of-fact all 

 through and goes straight to the point. The student may 

 read it without the fear of being led into paths unfamiliar to 

 him, despite the many-sided aspect of the subject, for common 

 sense puts a simple question, and common sense replies to 

 it in the simplest manner. 



The growth of scientific knowledge will be made very 

 comprehensible and clear if we first briefly define science, and 

 show how it originally arose. For this purpose we cannot do 

 better than borrow the substance of what has been said on 

 this matter by a masterly philosopher.* 



Science was, and is, an extension of common knowledge, 

 and can, by no possibility, be disconnected from it ; nor can 

 common knowledge and science be severed from the arts. 

 From the earliest times there was " a gradual advance from the 

 more to the less obvious phenomena. Science does not differ 

 from ordinary knowledge : the same faculties are employed in 

 both cases, their mode of operation is the same. Much 01 

 our common knowledge is, so far as it goes, rigorously 

 precise ; science is only an extension of the perceptions by 

 means of reasoning." Common knowledge then is the root 

 of the sciences and the arts, and the distinction between the 

 * Mr. Herbert Spencer's " Laws in General," and " Genesis of Science." 



