in THE SCIENTIFIC MIND 47 



response in the form of action. Light is invisible until 

 it strikes a material body, and a maxim of conduct has 

 likewise no practical meaning until it is reflected in 

 human life. The final test of a gospel is the influence 

 it has upon those who follow it ; and by that test the 

 Spirit of Science is content to be judged. Let one who 

 represented the Christian faith at its highest and best 

 testify to the virtues of men who are faithful students 

 of science : 



Good men, honest men, accurate men, righteous men, patient 

 men, self -restraining men, fair men, modest men. Men who are 

 aware of their own vast ignorance compared with the vast amount 

 that there is to be learned in such a universe as this. Men who 

 are accustomed to look at both sides of a question ; who, instead 

 of making up their minds in haste like bigots and fanatics, wait 

 like wise men, for more facts, and more thought about the facts. 

 In one word, men who have acquired just the habit of mind 

 which the study of Natural Science can give, and must give ; 

 for without it there is no use studying Natural Science ; and 

 the man who has not got that habit of mind, if he meddles with 

 science, will merely become a quack and a charlatan, only fit 

 to get his bread as a spirit-rapper, or an inventor of infallible 

 pills. Charles Kingsley. 



When King George III. appointed Herschel king's 

 astronomer at a salary of 200 a year, Sir William Watson, 

 Herschel's friend at Bath, exclaimed, " Never bought 

 monarch honour so cheaply." But it is so unusual for 

 a royal personage in England to give any practical 

 support to scientific studies that this remark seems a 

 trifle ungenerous, particularly as King George's action 

 enabled Herschel to give up the teaching of music and 

 concentrate his attention upon astronomy, and the 

 construction of telescopes, in aid of which he afterwards 

 obtained two grants of 2,000 each. " I spend money 

 on war because it is necessary," said George III. on ojne 

 occasion to Lalande, who had thanked him for his 



