OCTOBER 6, 1899. ] 
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 of the wicket-gate open- 
ing up the real path; losing heart he will 
turn back and add one more stone to the 
great cairn of the unaccomplished. 
But, I hear someone say, these qualities 
are not the peculiar attributes of the man 
of science, they may be recognized as be- 
longing to almost everyone who has com- 
manded or deserved success, whatever may 
have been his walk of life. That is so. 
That is exactly what I would desire to in- 
sist, that the men of science have no pecu- 
liar virtues, no special powers. They are 
ordinary men, their characters are common, 
even commonplace. Science, as Huxley 
said, is organized 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 bet- 
ter 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 a strict and, because 
strict, helpful school-mistress 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. 
SCIENCE. 
ATT 
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 con- 
clude 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 in- 
crease of knowledge; had she called to her 
service the many just men who have walked 
straight without the need of a 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 consider 
their favored lot, the achievements of the 
past should serve not asa 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, giv- 
ing 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 
