ix SCIENTIFIC MOTIVE 237 



one which needs to be continually revived and set in the new 

 light of modern discovery and invention. The lesson is simply 

 that until men began to observe and interrogate Nature for the 

 sake of learning her ways, and without concentrating their 

 attention on the expectation of useful applications of such 

 knowledge, little or no progress was made. In other words, 

 until a sufficient foundation of pure science has been successfully 

 laid there can be no applied science. Real progress comes from 

 the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Sir William Tilden. 



Whether the world recognises it or no, all its material 

 advance has been achieved by men of science. In the 

 arts of sculpture and architecture, in literature, in 

 philosophy, the position gained by Greece two thousand 

 years ago remains the standard of excellence for the 

 moderns, whereas the last fifty years or so have seen 

 more additions to natural knowledge than all the ages 

 before them ; and the result has been not only advance 

 in material welfare and comfort but also in intellectual 

 outlook. The present era will not be remembered in 

 future history for its art, its literature, or its drama, 

 but for its science, by which it is placed in a pre-eminent 

 position. The names of the men who have made this 

 the golden age of scientific discovery do not loom so 

 large to-day in the public eye as those of successful 

 military commanders or popular orators and authors, 

 but future generations will cherish them when the 

 warrior, the politician and the scribe have passed into 

 the limbo of forgotten things. 



Many of the intellectual giants to which the human 

 race will do homage came from the most unexpected 

 places, and the great discoveries they made often in 

 poverty or in the face of other obstacles went 

 unregarded by a world which believes that the business 

 of science is to find out useful things. Poisson, one of 

 a brilliant array of mathematicians, whom France 



