468 
WALOURE 
[SEPTEMBER 14, 1899 
into the years to come and straining our eyes to foresee what 
science will become and what it will do as they roll on. While 
we do so, the thought must come to us, Will all the increasing 
knowledge of nature avail only to change the ways of man— 
will it have no effect on man himself ? 
The material good which mankind has gained and is gaining 
through the advance of science is so imposing as to be obvious 
to every one, and the praises of this aspect of science are to be 
found in the mouths of all. Beyond all doubt science has 
greatly lessened and has markedly narrowed hardship and 
suffering ; beyond all doubt science has largely increased and 
has widely diffused ease and comfort. The appliances of science 
have, as it were, covered with a soft cushion the rough places 
of life, and that not for the rich only, but also for the poor. So 
abundant and so prominent are the material benefits of science 
that in the eyes of many these seem to be the only benefits 
which she brings. She is often spoken of as if she were useful 
and nothing more, as if her work were only to administer to the 
material wants of man. 
Is this so ? 
We may begin to doubt it when we reflect that the triumphs 
of science which bring these material advantages are in their 
very nature intellectual triumphs. The increasing benefits 
brought by science are the results of man’s increasing 
mastery over nature, and that mastery is increasingly a mastery 
of mind ; it is an increasing power to use the forces of what we 
call inanimate nature in place of the force of his own or other 
creatures’ bodies ; it is an increasing use of mind in place of 
muscle. 
Is it to be thought that that which has brought the mind so 
greatly into play has had no effect on the mind itself? Is 
that part of the mind which works out scientific truths a 
mere slavish machine producing results it knows not how, 
having no part in the good which in its working it brings 
forth ? 
What are the qualities, the features of that scientific mind 
which has wrought, and is working, such great changes in man’s 
relation tonature? In seeking an answer to this question we 
have not to inquire into the attributes of genius. Though much 
of the progress of science seems to take on the form of a series 
of great steps, each made by some great man, the distinction in 
science between the great discoverer and the humble worker is 
one of degree only, not of kind. As I was urging just now, the 
greatness of many great names in science is often, in large part, 
the greatness of occasion, not of absolute power. The qualities 
which guide one man to a small truth silently taking its place 
among its fellows, as these go to make up progress, are at bottom 
the same as those by which another man is led to something of 
which the whole world rings. 
The features of the fruitful scientific mind are in the main 
three. 
In the first place, above all other things, his nature must be 
one which vibrates in unison with that of which he is in search ; 
the seeker after truth must himself be truthful, truthful with 
the truthfulness of nature. For the truthfulness of nature is 
not wholly the same as that which man sometimes calls truthful- 
ness. It is far more imperious, far more exacting. Man, un- 
scientific man, is often content with ‘‘the nearly” and ‘‘the 
almost.” Nature never is. It is not her way to call the same 
two things which differ, though the difference may be measured 
by less than the thousandth of a milligramme or of a»millimetre, 
or by any other like standard of minuteness. And the man 
who, carrying the ways of the world into the domain of science, 
thinks that he may treat nature’s differences in any other way 
than she treats them herself, will find that she resents his 
conduct; if he in carelessness or in disdain overlooks the 
minute difference which she holds out to him as a signal to 
guide him in his search, the projecting tip, as it were, of some 
buried treasure, he is bound to go astray, and the more strenu- 
ously he struggles on, the farther will he find himself from his 
true goal. 
In the second place, he must be alert of mind. Nature is 
ever making signs to us, she is ever whispering to us the 
beginnings of her secrets; the scientific man must be ever on 
the watch, ready at once to lay hold of nature’s hint however 
small, to listen to her whisper however low. 
In the third place, scientific inquiry, though it be pre- 
eminently an intellectual effort, has need of the moral quality 
of courage—not so much the courage which helps a man to face 
a sudden difficulty as the courage of steadfast endurance. 
NO. 1559, VOL. 60] 
4 
Almost every inquiry, certainly every prolonged inquiry, 
sooner or later goes wrong. The path, at first so straight 
and clear, grows crooked and gets blocked; the hope 
and enthusiasm, or even the jaunty ease, with which the 
inquirer set out leave him, and he falls into a slough of despond. 
That is the critical moment calling for courage. Struggling 
through the slough he will find on the other side the wicket- 
gate opening up the real path; losing heart he will turn back 
and add one more stone to the great cairn of the unaccom- 
plished. 
But, I hear some one say, these qualities are not the peculiar 
attributes of the man of science ; they may be recognised as 
belonging to almost every one who has commanded or deserved 
success, whatever*may have been his walk of life. ‘That 
isso. That is exactly what I would desire to insist, that the 
men of science have no peculiar virtues, no special powers. 
They are ordinary men, their characters are common, even 
commonplace. Science, as Huxley said, is organised common 
sense, and men of science are common men, drilled in the ways 
of common sense. 
For their life has this feature. ° Though in themselves they are 
no stronger, no better than other men, they possess a strength 
which, as I just now urged, is not their own, but is that of the 
science whose servants they are. Even in his apprenticeship, 
the scientific inquirer, while learning what has been done before 
his time, if he learns it aright, so learns it that what is known 
may serve him, not only as a vantage ground whence to push off 
into the unknown, but also as a compass to guide him in his 
course. And when fitted for his work he enters on inquiry 
itself, what a zealous anxious guide, what astrict and, because 
strict, helpful schoolmistress does nature make herself to him ! 
Under her care every inquiry, whether it bring the inquirer to a 
happy issue or seem to end in nought, trains him for the next 
effort. She so orders her ways that each act of obedience to 
her makes the next act easier for him, and step by step she leads 
him on towards that perfect obedience which is complete 
mastery. 
Indeed, when we reflect on the potency of the discipline of 
scientific inquiry we cease to wonder at the progress of scientific 
knowledge. The results actually gained seem to fall so far 
short of what under such guidance might have been expected to 
have been gathered in that we are fain to conclude that science 
has called to follow her, for the most part, the poor in intellect 
and the wayward in spirit. Had she called to her service the 
many acute minds who have wasted their strength struggling in 
vain to solve hopeless problems, or who have turned their 
energies to things other than the increase of knowledge ; had 
she called to her service the many just men who have walked 
straight without the need ofa rod to guide them, how much 
greater than it has been would have been the progress of 
science, and how many false teachings would the world have 
been spared! To men of science themselves, when they con- 
sider their favoured lot, the achievements of the past should 
serve, not as a boast, but asa reproach. 
If there be any truth in what I have been urging, that the 
pursuit of scientific inquiry is itself a training of special potency, 
giving strength to the feeble and keeping in the path those who 
are inclined to stray, it is obvious that the material gains of 
science, great as they may be, do not make up all the good 
which science brings or may bring to man. We especially, 
perhaps, in these later days, through the rapid development of 
the physical sciences, are too apt to dwell on the material gains 
alone. As a child in its infancy looks upon its mother only as a 
giver of good things, and does not learn till in after days how 
she was also showing her love by carefully training it in the way 
it should go, so we, too, have thought too much of the gifts of 
science, overlooking her power to guide. 
Man does not live by bread alone, and science brings him more 
than bread. It is a great thing to make two blades of grass grow 
where before one alone grew ; but it is no less great a thing to 
help a man to come to a just conclusion on the questions with 
which he has to deal. We may claim for science that while she 
is doing the one she may be so used as todo the otheralso. The 
dictum just quoted, that science is organised common sense, may 
be read as meaning that the common problems of life which 
common people have to solve are to be solved by the same 
methods by which the man of science solves his special 
problems. It follows that the training which does so much 
for him may be looked to as promising to do much for 
them. Such aid can come from science on two conditions 
