208 SIR WILLIAM BAMSAY 



eat and a roof to sleep under, is but little removed from an 

 uncivilised being. For the test of civilisation is prevision ; care to 

 look forward ; to provide for to-morrow ; the morrow of the race 

 as well as the morrow of the individual, and he who looks furthest 

 ahead is best able to cope with Nature and to conquer her. 



If attempts were made to discover only useful knowledge (and 

 by useful I accept the vulgar definition of profitable, i.e. know- 

 ledge which can be directly transmuted into its money equi- 

 valent), these attempts would in many, if not in most, cases fail 

 of their object. I do not say that once a principle has been 

 proved, and a practical application has to be made of it that the 

 working out of the details is not necessary. But that is best 

 done by the practical man, be he the parson, the doctor, the 

 engineer, the technical electrician, or the chemist, and best of 

 all on a fairly large scale. If, however, the practical end be 

 always kept in view, the chances are that there will be no advance 

 in principles. Indeed what we investigators wish to be able to 

 do, and what in many cases we can do, although perhaps very 

 imperfectly, is to prophesy, to foretell what a given combination 

 of circumstances will produce. The desire is founded on a belief 

 in the uniformity of Nature ; on the conviction that what has 

 been will again be, should the original conditions be reproduced. 

 By studying the consequences of varying the conditions our 

 knowledge is extended ; indeed it is sometimes possible to go 

 so far as to predict what will happen under conditions all of which 

 have never before been seen to be present together. 



When Faraday discovered the fact that if a magnet is made 

 to approach a coil of wire an electric current is induced in that 

 wire, he made a discovery which at the time was of only scientific 

 interest. That discovery has resulted in electric light, electric 

 traction and the utilisation of electricity as a motive power : 

 the development of a means of transmitting energy of which 

 we have by no means seen the end ; nay, we are even now only 



