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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 720 



sary, and it is natural that a new com- 

 munity with unaceumulated wealth should 

 for a time devote all its energies to their 

 accomplishment and promote the studies 

 which accelerate them. No defense, there- 

 fore, is needed for the pl-omotion of ap- 

 plied science at the public expense in a 

 democratic community. 



What shall we say, however, to justify 

 the expenditure of public money to sup- 

 port people and supply means for inquiry 

 into the abstract subjects of philosophy, 

 mathematics, literature, history, psychol- 

 ogy and similar studies, which, in the 

 opinion of the masses and of most of the 

 classes, are of "no use" and no direct 

 utility to them 1 In the first place, we may 

 say that there is no necessary conflict be- 

 tween such branches of study and the other 

 group which we have just discussed. If 

 there were, who would undertake to say 

 which is the more important— subjects 

 which promote the material welfare of the 

 people or those which create and uplift 

 their spiritual and intellectual ideals? 

 There are times in the life of the nation 

 when a Tyrtaus is needed as a leader more 

 than a Ceesar. There are times when the 

 enthusiasm for righteouisness, the passion 

 for truth, ebbs so low in the lives of indi- 

 viduals and nations that their welfare and 

 progress, even in an economic sense, can be 

 best promoted by arousing them to new 

 enthusiasm and stirring them to new 

 ideals. A democracy, therefore, is not 

 compelled to choose between this kind of 

 research and the other, as if it could not 

 do both; as if, forsooth, it were compelled 

 to choose which god it would serve. In the 

 long run, applied science, theoretical sci- 

 ence, and the abstract studies of a more 

 speculative character must stand or fall 

 together in the life of the people. 



For, in the firat place, as I have re- 

 marked, these lines of scholarship run into 

 each other. "All experience proves that 



the spiritual is the first cause of the prac- 

 tical." In the eloquent words of Walter 

 Bagehot, the "rise of physical science, the 

 first great body of practical truth provable 

 to all men, exemplifies this in the plainest 

 way. If it had not been for quiet people 

 who sat still and studied the sections of the 

 cone, if other quiet people had not sat still 

 and studied the theory of infinitesimals, or 

 other quiet people had not sat still and 

 worked out the doctrine of chances, the 

 most dreamy moonshine as the purely prac- 

 tical mind would consider, of all human 

 pursuits; if idle star gazers had not 

 watched long and carefully the motions of 

 the heavenly bodies, our modern astron- 

 omy would have been impossible, and with- 

 out our astronomy our ships, our colonies, 

 our seamen, all which makes modern life 

 modern life, could not have existed. . . . 

 It is the product of men whom their con- 

 temporaries thought dreamers, who . . . 

 walked into a well from looking at the 

 stars— who were believed to be useless to 

 the world ; who, to the practical mind, were 

 mere theorizers, but without whose theories, 

 of the study of which we sometimes grow 

 so impatient, the practical results which we 

 desire could not be reached." 



Who could have foreseen that Franklin 's 

 experiment with the kite, with numberless 

 other experiments that to the practical 

 mind of the time seemed mere boy's play, 

 would result in the vast modern practical 

 development of electricity ? 



There are not many men in the ordinary 

 walks of life who have ever heard the 

 name of Willard Gibbs. Yet there is no 

 name entitled to a more honorable place 

 in the world of learning in the long list of 

 those connected with Yale University since 

 its foundation. He devoted his life to the 

 study of an abstruse subject called vector 

 analysis. In his application of this 

 method of mathematical investigation to 

 the study of the relations between heat and 



