120 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 839 



gation is going on which aims to secure 

 immediate practical results. In chemistry 

 and medicine especially the activity in the 

 work of applied science is very great. This 

 condition gives a powerful fresh reason for 

 defending pure abstruse science. Applied 

 science always has been, is now, and prob- 

 ably always will be distinctly subsidiary 

 to pure science. The final justification of 

 all scientific research is undoubtedly the 

 power it creates for the use of mankind, 

 but the power must be created before it 

 can be used. A little study of the history 

 of science should suffice to convince any 

 reasonable mind that the command we pos- 

 sess to-day over nature is due to the labors 

 of men, who have almost invariably pur- 

 sued knowledge with a pure devotion un- 

 contaminated by any worship of useful- 

 ness. These devoted idealists have gath- 

 ered the varied mighty harvests by which 

 all men have profited, but the debt of 

 gratitude to them is unpaid. 



The pursuit of abstruse science needs to 

 be encouraged. It is insufficiently es- 

 teemed. This doctrine ought to be empha- 

 sized on all suitable occasions, but espe- 

 cially before the section of experimental 

 medicine. The people cry for relief from 

 sickness and their demand for prompt use- 

 ful discoveries is so urgent that there is 

 danger in it, since it tempts medical in- 

 vestigators away from the fundamental 

 enquiries, which, answered, will give great 

 results, and seduces them to work exclu- 

 sively at secondary problems, from the 

 solution of which quicker, but smaller re- 

 sults may be expected. Pure science is 

 broad ; it embraces all. Applied science is 

 a congery of fragments, of isolated prob- 

 lems, which lack cohesion and are without 

 any necessary connection with one another. 

 It is easy to understand why students of 

 applied science have seldom made great 

 discoveries. 



In fact, scientific knowledge will not be 

 compelled. "We have to take what knowl- 

 edge we can get, and by no means can we 

 get always what knowledge we want. Pure 

 science adapts its undertakings to these 

 rigid conditions, and works where the op- 

 portunity is best — not so applied science. 



Let us recall a few of the epoch-making 

 discoveries. "When Galileo turned his lean 

 face up towards the swinging lamp in the 

 Cathedral of Pisa and as he looked discov- 

 ered the law of the moving pendulum, he 

 was in quest of pure knowledge. "We can 

 not conceive such a man actuated by any 

 lower motive. Even when we learn of his 

 astonishing the Venetian merchants by en- 

 abling them to see their far-off vessels 

 through his newly invented telescope, do 

 we not feel that it was merely an episode 

 to Galileo? Such a man does not ask 

 "What use is it?" His demand for 

 knowledge was insatiable. When Newton 

 thought out the problem of gravity and his 

 theory of planetary motion; when Mal- 

 pighi explored the structure of animals 

 with his crude microscope; when Lavoisier 

 created modern chemistry; when Cuvier 

 combined comparative anatomy and pale- 

 ontology and made the combination yield 

 new revelations; when Lyell proved geo- 

 logical history to be an evolution and not 

 a succession of cataclysms; when von Baer 

 against immense difficulties traced the de- 

 velopment of the chick; when Schwann 

 demonstrated the correspondence of cellu- 

 lar structure in animals with that of plants 

 — was one of them actuated primarily by 

 the wish to get practical results? We 

 have only to read their works to convince 

 ourselves that they were all in search of 

 knowledge for knowledge's sake. Yet they 

 are the giants of human history, who in 

 importance are approached by few mon- 

 archs or statesmen. Compared with the 

 growth of science the shiftings of govern- 



