526 : REPORT—1883. 
which cannot be trusted to the voluntary enterprise arising from the operation of 
the laws of self-preservation and the struggle for wealth. There are, however, it 
seems to me, further reasons for desiring a thorough and practical recognition by 
the State of the value of scientific research. There are not wanting persons of 
some cultivation who have perceived and fully realised the value of that knowledge 
which is called science, and of its methods, and yet are anxious to restrain rather 
than to aid the growth of that knowledge. They find in science something inimical 
to their own interests, and accordingly either condemn it as dangerous and un- 
trustworthy, or encourage themselves to treat it with contempt by asserting that 
‘after all, science counts for very little’—a statement which is unhappily true in 
one sense, though totally untrue when it is intended to signify that the progress of 
science is not a matter which profoundly influences every factor in the well-being 
of the community. Amongst such people there isa positive hatred of science, 
which finds expression in their exclusion of it, even at this day, from the ordinary 
curriculum of public school education, and in the baseless though oft-repeated 
calumny that science is hostile to art, and is responsible for all that is harsh, ugly, 
and repulsive in modern life. To such opponents of the advancement of science, 
itis of little use to offer explanations and arguments. But we may, when we 
reflect on their instinctive hostility and the misrepresentations of science and the 
scientific spirit which it leads them to disseminate, console ourselves. by bringing 
to mind what science really is, and what truly is the nature of that calling in 
which a man who makes new knowledge is engaged. 
They mock at the botanist as a pedant, and the zoologist as a monomaniac ; 
they execrate the physiologist as a monster of cruelty, and brand the geologist as 
a blasphemer ; chemistry is held responsible for the abomination of aniline dyes 
and the pollution of rivers, and physics for the dirt and misery of great factory 
towns. By these unbelievers science is declared responsible for individual eccen- 
tricities of character, as well as for the sins of the commercial utilisers of new 
Knowledge. The pursuit of science is said to produce a dearth of imagination, 
incapability of enjoying the beauty either of nature or of art, scorn of literary 
culture, arrogance, irreverence, vanity, and the ambition of personal glorification. 
Such are the charges from time to time made by those who dislike science, and 
for such reasons they would withhold, and persuade others to withhold, the fair 
measure of support for scientific research which this country owes to the commu- 
nity of civilised states. Not in reply to these misrepresentations, but by way of 
contrast, I would here state what science seems to be to those who are on the 
other side, and how, therefore, it seems to them wrong to delay in doing all that 
the wealth and power of the State can do, to promote its progress. 
Science is not a name applicable to any one branch of knowledge, but includes 
all knowledge which is of a certain order or scale of completeness. All knowledge 
which is deep enough to touch the causes of things, is Science; all inquiry into 
the causes of things is scientific inquiry. It is not only. co-extensive with the area 
of human knowledge, but no branch of it can advance far without reacting upon 
other branches; no department of Science can be neglected without sooner or later 
causing a check to other departments. No man cantruly say this branch of Science 
is useful and shall be cultivated, whilst this is worthless and shall be let alone; for all 
are necessary, and one grows by the aid of another, and in turn furnishes methods 
and results assisting in the progress of that from which it lately borrowed. 
We desire the increase and the support and the acceptance of Science, not only 
because it has a certain material value and enables men to battle with the 
forces of nature and to turn them to account, so as to increase both the intensity 
and the extension of healthy human life: that is a good reason, and for, some persons, 
it may be, the only reason. But there is something to be said beyond this. 
The pursuit of scientific discovery, the making of new knowledge, gratifies an 
appetite which, from whatever cause it may arise, is deeply seated in man’s nature, 
and indeed is the most distinctive of his properties. Man owes this intense desire 
to know the nature of things, smothered though it often be by other cravings which 
he shares with the brutes, to an inherited race-perception stronger than the reason- 
ing faculty of the individual. When once aroused and in a measure gratified, this 
