Februaky 1, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



103 



method are prime essentials for the welfare 

 of a state. Germany has taught the world 

 other lessons besides the futility of inter- 

 national infidelity, the ineffectiveness of 

 barbarism in a world of civilization, the 

 weakness of terrorism and low insult when 

 confronted by patriotism and by individual 

 and national self-respect. She (though not 

 she alone) has taught the civic value of 

 science. 



The failure of England to recognize the 

 civic value of science has been publicly 

 noted in recent debates in the House of 

 Lords. A notable ease in point, of special 

 interest to botanists, is the passing of a 

 resolution (now happily repealed) to sus- 

 pend the publication of the Eew B^tlletin. 

 Remarking on this. Nature (in a recent 

 number) declared that, 



unless -vre learn in time the lessons which this war 

 is enforcing on every side, namely, that the way of 

 prosperity in the future lies in promoting scien- 

 tific knowledge and utilising the results of scien- 

 tific investigation (italics mine), it wiU make but 

 little difference in the long run whether we win the 

 war or not. 



And again : 

 . . . the same ofSeial lack of appreciation of the 

 importance of scientific inquiry and research, which 

 was a matter of common knowledge amongst our 

 competitors before the war, still continues to sap 

 the foundations of our recognized claims to our 

 foreign possessions, which should largely rest on 

 the encouragement of their material development 

 on sound economic, and therefore on scientific 

 lines.* 



Science for science's sake, like art for 

 art's sake, may be a noble sentiment, but 

 its limitations should not be lost sight of. 

 Society is justified in asking of every scien- 

 tist, as of every other man, of what use can 

 you be in the body politic? But though 

 there is no place for the useless, usefulness 

 may not always be at once apparent. "It 

 is perfectly natural," said John Tyndal," 



4 Science, June 22, 1917, pp. 630-631. 



5 ' ' New Fragments, ' ' p. 143. 



"for persons who have little taste for sci- 

 entific inquiry and less knowledge of the 

 methods of Nature, to feel amused, if not 

 scandalized, by the apparently insignificant 

 subjects which sometimes occupy the sci- 

 entific mind. They are not aware that in 

 science the most stupendous phenomena 

 often find their suggestion and interpreta- 

 tion in the most minute — that the smallest 

 laboratory fact is connected by indissoluble 

 ties with the grandest operations of Na- 

 ture." Huxley, also, long since pointed 

 out that as Saul found a kingdom while 

 seeking his father's asses, so many great 

 discoveries have resulted from the pursuit 

 of illusions which seemed asinine to the un- 

 initiated. 



Thus, one hundred years ago nothing 

 could probably have seemed more remote 

 from the practical affairs of everyday life 

 than the use of pollen and the relation be- 

 tween insects and flowers, yet a few decades 

 sufficed to show that that knowledge is 

 fundamental to the experimental investiga- 

 tion of heredity and the prosecution of 

 practical plant breeding. While one can 

 not, and indeed should not, always go de- 

 liberately after the immediately applicable, 

 there is no reason why scientific men should 

 be loath to do so, nor be in danger of scien- 

 tific ostracism when they do. Those who 

 may be inclined to take issue with this point 

 of view need only recall the illustrious 

 names of Sir Humphry Davy, of Lord 

 Kelvin, of Count Rumford, and, in botany, 

 of Thomas Andrew Knight, Louis Pasteur, 

 Marshal "Ward and others. Botanists, of all 

 men, recalling their dependence upon mi- 

 croscopes and microtomes, thermometers 

 and evaporimeters, balances and thermo- 

 stats, and especially on aniline dyes, 

 should be the last to belittle the value and 

 dignity of applied science. 



It is a pleasure to note what is, no doubt. 



