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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 793 



of scientific studies, it is only natural that 

 the first things which arise in the mind 

 should be the concrete things — the great 

 practical benefits which have become so 

 much a part of our lives that we wonder 

 how our ancestors could have been com- 

 fortable without them. We think of all 

 that the engineers have done for us with 

 steam and electricity; and we remember 

 that all the modern industrial applications 

 of electricity had their origin in Faraday's 

 laboratory; that wireless telegraphy, which 

 has added to the security of all those who 

 go down to the sea in ships, was born in 

 the laboratory of Hertz. In our admira- 

 tion of the great achievements of genius we 

 do not forget the humbler services of lesser 

 men who have attended to the details ; who 

 have made improvements here and there; 

 and who, in the aggregate, have contributed 

 incalculably to the results which we see all 

 about us. But laboratories have done more 

 than to provide opportunities for discov- 

 eries great and small, which are afterward 

 put to the practical service of mankind. 

 In them has been trained the great army 

 of experts who keep the machinery of our 

 industrial civilization running, and upon 

 whose skill and knowledge we depend every 

 day more than we know for safety, pros- 

 perity and comfort. This educational func- 

 tion of laboratories is of the greatest im- 

 portance from whatever point of view we 

 regard the subject, and we shall have occa- 

 sion again to consider it more in detail. 



It is not only in the domain of engineer- 

 ing (which is mainly applied physics) that 

 we see these great, tangible results. Chem- 

 istry and biology are in no way behind their 

 sister science in the direct benefits which 

 they have conferred upon us. We have 

 only to think of the enormous improve- 

 ments which the study of chemistry has 

 made possible in manufactures, in metal- 

 lurgy and in many other branches of indus- 



try, to recognize what chemistry has done 

 for the world. And in addition to such 

 services, chemistry has powerfully assisted 

 biology in the magnificent contributions 

 which have been made to the cause of 

 human health and security within the past 

 two or three decades. Even a partial 

 enumeration of these advances is convin- 

 cing. Antiseptic surgery, the germ theory 

 of infectious diseases, antitoxins, methods 

 of stamping out such plagues as malaria 

 and yellow-fever, the lessening of infant 

 mortality— can any one compute how much 

 sorrow and suffering have been prevented 

 by these discoveries? And without labo- 

 ratories and without men trained in labora- 

 tories, we should have had none of them. 



All these things are obvious enough; 

 even the "man in the street" is not in 

 much doubt about them. But is there any- 

 thing beyond this, anything less tangible 

 and therefore more difficult to state and to 

 perceive, anything higher and nobler than 

 these concrete practical services? We 

 should not, I think, find such entire una- 

 nimity in answer to this question as we 

 encounter with regard to the so-called 

 practical results of the sciences. Many 

 people who have not thought much about 

 the matter and some people who have 

 thought much, but whose work and sym- 

 pathies lie in other directions, would still 

 be inclined to define science as "useful 

 knowledge" with a very narrow significa- 

 tion of the word useful. To such persons, 

 the sciences find their sole excuse for exist- 

 ence in their practical applications ; if they 

 look with amused tolerance tipon the enthu- 

 siasm of spectacled professors over a dis- 

 covery in pure science, it is only because 

 they have come to realize that, in the course 

 of time, even the most unpromising dis- 

 covery may have important practical appli- 

 cations. Of course we have no monopoly 

 of such unsatisfactory supporters; the 



