OCTOBEK 12, iaS3.] 



SCIENCE. 



51") 



ologist as a monster of cruelty, and brand the geolo- 

 gist 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 de- 

 clared responsible for individual eccentricities of char- 

 acter, as well as for tlie sins of the commercial utilizers 

 of new knowledge. The pursuit of science is said to 

 produce a dearth of imagination, incapability of en- 

 joying the beauty cither 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 community of civilized 

 States. Xot 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 knowl- 

 edge 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 can truly say this branch of science is useful, 

 and shall be cultivated, whilst tliis 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 cer- 

 tain 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 prop- 

 erties. 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 desire becomes a 

 guiding passion. The instinctive tendency to search 

 out the causes of things, gradually strengthening as 

 generation after generation of men have stumbled 

 and struggled in ignorance, has at last become an 

 active and widely extending force: it has given rise 

 to a new faith. 



To obey this instinct — that is, to aid in the pro- 

 duction of new knowledge — is the keenest and the 

 purest pleasure of which man is capable, greater than 

 that derive<l from the exercise of his animal facul- 

 ties in proportion as man's mind is something greater 

 and further developed than the mind of brutes. It 

 is in itself an unmixed good, the one thing which 

 commends itself as still ' worth while ' when all other 

 employments and delights prove themselves stale and 

 unprofitable. 



Arrogant and foolish as those men have appeared, 

 who, in times of persecution, and in the midst of a 

 contemptuous society, have, with an ardor propor- 

 tioned to the prevailing neglect, pursued some special 

 line of scientific inquiry, it is nevertheless true that 

 in itself, apart from special social conditions, science 

 must develop, in a community which honors and de- 

 sires it before all things, qualities and characteristics 

 which are the highest, the most human of human 

 attributes. These are, firstly, the fearless love and 

 unflinching acceptance of truth; hopeful patience; 

 that true humility which is content not to know what 

 cannot be known, yet labors and waits; love of Na- 

 ture, who is not less, but more worshipped by those 

 who know her best; love of the human brotherhood, 

 for whom and with whom the growth of science is 

 desired and effected. 



No one can trace the limits of science, nor the 

 possibilities of happiness, both of mind and body, 

 which it may bring in the future to mankind. Bound- 

 less though the prospect is, yet the minutest contri- 

 bution to the onward growth has its absolute and 

 unassailable value, — once made, it can never be lost: 

 its effect is forever in the history of man. 



Arts perish, and the noblest works which artists 

 give to the world. Art, though the source of great 

 and noble delights, cannot create nor perpetuate: it 

 embodies only that which already exists in human 

 experience, whilst the results of its highest flights 

 are doomed to decay and sterility. A vain regret, a 

 constant effort to emulate or to imitate the past, is 

 the fitting and laudable characteristic of art at the 

 present day. There is, indeed, no truth in the popu- 

 lar partition of human affairs between science and 

 art as between two antagonistic or even comparable 

 interests; but the contrast which they present in 

 points such as those just mentioned is forcible. Sci- 

 ence is essentially creative: new knowledge — the 

 experience and understanding of things which were 

 previouxly non-existenl for man's intellii/ence — is its 

 constant achievement. And these creations never 

 perish: the new is built on, and incorporates, the old; 

 there is no turning back to recover what has lapsed 

 through age; the oldest discovery is even fresher 

 than the new, yielding in ever-increasing number 

 new results, in which it is itself reproduced and per- 

 petuated, as the parent in the child. 



This, then, is the faith which has taken shape in 

 proportion as the innate desire of man for more 

 knowledge has asserted itself: namely, that there is 

 no greater good than the increase of science; that 

 through it all other good will follow. Good as sci- 

 ence is in itself, tlie desire and search for it is even 



