Sigma Xi II 259 



shall wait upon the physical needs and comforts of man ; 

 science shall be applied. 



It is needless to cite illustration here ; accomplishment 

 is everywhere familiar, far-shining as electric light, mu- 

 sical as the voices of distant friends, and far-reaching as 

 the Hertzian waves. Men who care for wealth alone, 

 for science not at all, have discovered that science pays ; 

 and, with the eagerness of those who seek for gain, such 

 men to-day demand research in the solution of their 

 problems. It is notably the business of applied science 

 at this moment not only to tell how science has been ap- 

 plied, but to join hands with invention, to devise new 

 application of discovered principles; to bring farther 

 and farther the energies of the physical world into the 

 control of enlightened man. 



But, wonderful and valuable as this is, and the insis- 

 tence of popular clamor will not allow us to forget it, 

 there is behind all this another field of intellectual dis- 

 covery, another empire of research of which the public 

 seldom hears, but without which not only applied science 

 but all science must cease to be. This is research for its 

 own sake ; research which has for its object the discovery 

 of fact, all apart from any application which may after- 

 ward ensue. Marie Skolodowska and Pierre Curie toiled 

 for thirty years or ever mankind should know of polo- 

 nium and radium and the shining world of radio-active 

 things that simply fascinate to-day the scientific man. 

 That these should cure tuberculosis or lupus, was farthest 

 from their thought; perhaps even to-day Mme. la veuve 

 Curie knows nothing of it. 



When Leeuwenhoek with his dim lenses noted the 



