PROGRESSIVENESS OF SCIENCE. 4.7 



for publicity or publication, for they are genuine 

 amateurs in the literal sense. 



Another way of illustrating the ineradicable sci- 

 entific mood is to consider a few biographies of 

 eminent workers, and to notice how often the environ- 

 mental conditions were the very reverse of propi- 

 tious. The " Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficul- 

 ties " is a well-worn theme, of considerable interest 

 to those who have had experience in the task of try- 

 ing to induce uninterested students to pursue knowl- 

 edge under the most favourable conditions. 



It may perhaps be argued that although the sci- 

 entific mood is characteristically human and must 

 therefore persist, while man as we know him does, 

 yet the subjects of enquiry are limited and the range 

 of our sense-experience is not infinite. Therefore 

 there must be an end to the progress of science, and 

 a time must come when the confession ignoramus 

 will be no longer heard in the land, for all the prob- 

 lems that have not been solved will be insoluble, and 

 ignorabimus will remain as the only word of intel- 

 lectual modesty. It can hardly be said that this 

 question of the completion of scientific enquiry is 

 one of practical politics, but it may not be unprofit- 

 able to consider it for a little. 



It was surely a momentary aberration which led 

 a great zoologist to suggest not long ago, in the 

 enthusiasm of a retrospect, that it was now about 

 time for us to be making a list of the things we did 

 not know. A very different suggestion was made in 

 a remarkable sentence in the presidential address 

 delivered by the late Dr. Edward Orton at the 1899 

 meeting of the American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science. " The founders of the As- 

 sociation, fifty years ago, clearly saw that they were 



