THE ELECTRIC LIGHT. 685 



electric light seems so cool. It is this temperature that 

 renders the proportion of luminous to non-luminous heat 

 greater in the electric light than in our brightest flames. 

 The electric light, moreover,, requires no air to sustain it. 

 It glows in the most perfect air vacuum. Its light and 

 heat are therefore not purchased at the expense of the 

 vitalizing constituent of the atmosphere. 



Two orders of minds have been implicated in the develop- 

 ment of this subject; first, the investigator and discoverer, 

 whose object is purely scientific, and who cares little for 

 practical ends; secondly, the practical mechanician, whose 

 object is mainly industrial. It would be easy, and prob- 

 ably 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 unfrequeutly 

 merges the hope of profit in the love of his work. Mem- 

 bers of each of these classes are sometimes scornful toward 

 those of the other. There is, for example, 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 discovered 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 abundance, this luxury, this tumult," 

 " this commotion/' he would have added, were he now 

 alive, " regarding the electric light" "all come from 

 discoveries in science, though all remain strange to them. 

 The day that a discovery 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 

 instrument or the invention of a new one is often 

 tantamount to an enlargement and refinement of the senses 

 of the scientific investigator. Beyond this, the amelio- 

 ration of the community is also an object worthy of the 

 best efforts of the human brain. Still, assuredly it is well 

 and wise for a nation to bear in mind that those practical 



