SECTION 4. THE SCIENTIFICALLY TRAINED INDIVIDUAL. 33 



and hygiene, where both meet. 1 In the distant past this was 

 not the case, because science, strictly speaking, was as yet 

 scarcely developed; in the distant future this will be again 

 different, for the scientific method will be, as we have already 

 intimations to-day, a universal possession universally cherished 

 and applied. Practice will then fraternise with theory, and 

 theory be a close ally of practice. In essence, as we have 

 seen, the world of experience is one and undivided, developing 

 from wholly unsystematised and practical thought to wholly 

 systematised and theoretico-practical cogitation. 



More than two generations ago Comte proposed a solution of the problem 

 of how far the man of science should subordinate his researches to the 

 needs of practice. We present the solution in his own words, only premising 

 that the needs of applied science, and those of industrial and commercial 

 activities generally, increasingly demand the initiation of theoretical 

 researches; that in not a few cases it has been found practicable to pass 

 backwards and forwards from theoretical to applied sciences and arts; 

 and that, indeed, with the gradual subjugation of many scientific and 

 practical spheres, a compendious theoretico-practical treatment will be 

 effected with facility, and therefore grow common. "Immense as are the 

 services rendered to Industry by Science, and although according to the 

 striking aphorism of Bacon Knowledge is Power, we must never forget 

 that the Sciences have a yet higher and more direct destination, that of 

 satisfying the craving of our minds to know the laws of phenomena. . . . 

 The general tendency of our time is, in this respect, defective and narrow. 

 But, in the case of scientists, it is corrected, consciously or not, by the 

 strong natural craving of which I have spoken. Otherwise the human 

 intellect would be confined to researches of immediate practical utility, 

 and, as Condorcet very justly remarked, would for that reason alone be 

 completely arrested in its progress. This would be the case even as regards 

 those practical applications to which we should have imprudently sacrificed 

 the purely theoretical labours ; for the most important practical appli- 

 cations are constantly derived from theories formed for purely scientific 

 purposes, and which have often been cultivated during many centuries 

 without producing any practical result. ... It is, therefore, evident, that, 

 after the study of nature has been conceived in a general way as serving 

 for the rational basis of our action upon it, we must next proceed to 

 theoretical researches, leaving wholly on one side every practical con- 

 sideration. Our means for discovering truth are so feeble that if we do 

 not concentrate them exclusively upon this object, and if we hamper our 

 search for truth with the extraneous condition that it shall have some 



1 Theory owes already much to practice. "Pour preciser par quelques 

 exemples les grands apports etrangers aux sciences naturelles qui les ont in- 

 sensiblement creees ou periodiquement bouleversees, ^numerous rapidement 

 et pele-mele les sacrifices religieux de victimes ani males et 1'examen de leurs 

 visceres, les voyages commerciaux des Egyptiens et des Pheniciens, les jeux 

 du cirque dans la Rome imp6riale, la decouverte de rAmerique et les ex- 

 plorations ulterieures, la combinaison de lentilles qui fit' le microscope, la 

 pose des cables transatlantiques qui conduisit aux grands dragages abyssaux, 

 les recherches de Pasteur que les besoins de la brasserie amenerent par des 

 etudes de chimie a transformer la biologic et la medecine." (Fr6de>ic Houssay, 

 Nature et sciences naturelles, about 1903, pp. 1-2.) 



Thus chemistry had its origin in the desire for adornments, for fermented 

 liquors, for dyes, and other useful articles, for medicines, and for transforming 

 ordinary substances into gold. (See also Conclusion 32.) 



