

SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 603. 



be self-supporting. Many of the evils of 

 socialism, hatred of the rich and fear of 

 powerful organizations, are due to this cause. 



If a man never gets beyond the money- 

 making stage, he can hardly be called a 

 student of science. Let us assume that he 

 is intellectually a success and attains a 

 college position. He will never be rich, 

 but since he is as well off as his associates 

 he is not poor. His next aim is likely to 

 be personal fame— a better object than 

 wealth, but still a purely selfish one. In 

 this stage of his development he tries to 

 •obtain honorary membership in societies, 

 degrees or other honors, instead of waiting 

 for them to come to him unsolicited. He 

 makes reclamations of priority, and de- 

 posits sealed packages in the safe of the 

 French Academy, so that if any one else 

 should make the same discovery he can call 

 for his package and prove that he is en- 

 titled to the entire credit, since he was first. 

 If he is young, he attacks the work of some 

 'Older man, and thus gains notoriety, even 

 if his charges are disproved or ignored. 

 The specious plea, 'I feel obliged, in the 

 interests of science, to point out that my 

 friend, Mr. A., is entirely wrong,' seldom 

 conceals the true motive. 



The next aim is higher and is for fame, 

 not for himself but for his college, his city 

 or his country. Enthusiasm for his state 

 is dampened when the latter attempts to 

 tax scientific institutions, instead of aiding 

 them as is done in all other civilized coun- 

 tries. For years nearly all English mathe- 

 maticians, following Newton, dealt with 

 fluents and fluxions, while the continental 

 mathematicians, following Leibnitz, used 

 differential coefficients. The astronomers 

 who gave the principal credit to Adams for 

 the discovery of Neptune were nearly all 

 Englishmen, while few Frenchmen admit- 

 ted the claims of any one but Le Verrier. 



This brings us to what should be the true 

 aim of the student of science, the advance- 



ment of human knowledge and the de- 

 termination of the laws regulating the 

 physical universe. His sole object should 

 be to secure the best possible results, and 

 he must be ready to make any sacrifice of 

 his personal wishes for this end. Astron- 

 omy thus becomes international, and wholly 

 impersonal. To how many of us is this the 

 one and only aim, regardless of all selfish 

 considerations? We must not expect too 

 much of poor human nature, and yet it can 

 do no harm to make our ideal a high one. 

 No man is likely to surpass his ideal, and 

 even if it is so high that he can not hope 

 to reach it, he may go further than if he 

 tries only to attain money or fame. The aims 

 of the astronomer thus become the aims 

 of astronomy, and there is no subject to 

 which he can better give careful attention. 

 No man can hope to advance science now, 

 as has been done in the past. Think of 

 writing a book which not only would sur- 

 vive and be useful for two thousand years, 

 but which for fourteen centuries should be 

 the great work, and practically the only 

 authority, of its kind. Yet this is the posi- 

 tion held by the Almagest of Ptolemy. 

 During the greater portion of this time it 

 was reproduced again and again by labori- 

 ous hand-made copies into which errors 

 crept, were repeated and multiplied. By 

 far the best copy bridges more than half 

 the interval, since it was clearly written in 

 the uncial characters of the ninth century. 

 It is deposited in the Bibliotheque Nation- 

 ale in Paris, and in 1883 was kept in one 

 of the show cases of that institution. It 

 contains a catalogue of more than a thou- 

 sand stars, which is perhaps that pre- 

 pared by Hipparchus, nearly two centuries 

 earlier. It not only gives the positions, 

 but the brightness, of all of these stars, and 

 shows that at the beginning of the Chris- 

 tian era the appearance of the heavens was 

 nearly the same as at present. Even a 

 careful observer, without instruments, 



