rr THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 53 



James Watt. But, though some of the most im- 

 portant of the improvements by which Watt 

 converted the steam-engine, invented long before 

 his time, into the obedient slave of man, were 

 suggested and guided by his acquaintance with 

 scientific principles, his skill as a practical 

 mechanician and the efficiency of Bolton's work- 

 men had quite as much to do with the realisation 

 of his projects. 



In fact, the history of physical science teaches 

 (and we cannot too carefully take the lesson to 

 heart) that the practical advantages, attainable 

 through its agency, never have been, and never 

 will be, sufficiently attractive to men inspired by 

 the inborn genius of the interpreter of Nature, to 

 give them courage to undergo the toils and make 

 the sacrifices which that calling requires from its 

 votaries. That which stirs their pulses is the love 

 of knowledge and the joy of the discovery of the 

 causes of things sung by the old poet the 

 supreme delight of extending the realm of law 

 and order ever farther towards the unattainable 

 goals of the infinitely great and the infinitely 

 small, between which our little race of life is run. 

 In the course of this work, the physical philo- 

 sopher, sometimes intentionally, much more often 

 unintentionally, lights upon something which 

 proves to be of practical value. Great is the 

 rejoicing of those who are benefited thereby ; and, 

 for the moment, science is the Diana of all the 



