NOVEMBEB 5, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



629 



significance of what we call natural laws 

 lies in the fact that they tersely sum up 

 our experience of the world at any given 

 moment ; and, above all, they endow us with 

 a gift of prophecy that leads us on to new 

 advances. Just here we are in sight of 

 what is most vital, characteristic and hope- 

 ful in the spirit of modern science; and 

 here, too, the all-important role of the sci- 

 entific imagination first begins really to im- 

 press us. 



Our assured knowledge of nature is 

 gained little by little, through the slow and 

 cautious processes of observation, experi- 

 ment and reason; but far different from 

 these is the motive power of science. In 

 every field the great discoverers have been 

 seers, men of imaginative vision, carried 

 onwards by a swift intuition that runs far 

 in advance of solid fact or rigorous logic 

 and ranges freely to and fro in undiscov- 

 ered realms beyond them. And this is a 

 true creative process, one that is singularly 

 like what we call the inspiration of the 

 painter or the poet. It often thrills us in 

 the same way. Such a work of the imag- 

 ination was Michael Faraday's wonderful 

 anticipation of the electro-magnetic theory 

 of light. Such was Charles Darwin's con- 

 ception of natural selection which, as he 

 himself has related, suddenly flashed upon 

 his mind as he was reading the famous book 

 of Malthus. Such, again, were the dreams 

 that led Louis Pasteur and his followers, 

 step by step, from the phenomena of fer- 

 mentation and putrefaction to that most 

 beneficent and practical achievement of our 

 civilization — the germ theory of disease. At 

 every point the material world overflows 

 with half-revealed meanings about which 

 science is forever weaving her imaginative 

 fabrics ; and at their best these have all the 

 freedom, boldness and beauty of true works 

 of art. One conspicuous trait, indeed, dis- 

 tinguishes the man of science — his incor- 



rigible, almost automatic insistence upon 

 verification. For no one better knows that 

 the children of his imagination will live 

 only in so far as they take on the living 

 flesh and blood of reality in the appeal to 

 nature. Not many of them survive the 

 ordeal; yet they are the pioneers of prog- 

 ress, and the real conquerors of the world. 

 Our own alma mater has placed above the 

 portal of one of her great halls of science 

 the words : "Speak to the earth and it shall 

 teach thee." Beside them we might fit- 

 tingly inscribe that other Scriptural ad- 

 monition: Prove all things; hold fast that 

 which is good. 



I say once more, then, that the develop- 

 ment and discipline of the imagination is 

 the best gift of science to our intellectual 

 life, and hence to liberal education. Per- 

 mit me also to suggest that there is no royal 

 road, no pedagogical short-cut, that will 

 lead us to it. Lectures and text-books on 

 science are, I suppose, a necessary part of 

 the apparatus of educational nutrition. 

 Not by them, however, but by the actual 

 phenomena of nature is the scientific imag- 

 ination first awakened to its real life. Our 

 laboratories of science have their short- 

 comings; in them, nevertheless, such as 

 they are, the fruitful and abiding lessons 

 of science are learned. It must not be 

 imagined that the student has no other oc- 

 cupation than to disport himself at ease in 

 that legendary realm of popular fancy 

 known as the ' ' fairyland of science. ' ' The 

 prosaic but wholesome truth is that most 

 of us are kept too busy digging out facts at 

 lower levels to have much opportunity to 

 breathe the atmosphere of the upper alti- 

 tudes. But if the learner can not be taken 

 up straightway to the highest mountain 

 peaks, he may at least be enabled now and 

 then to catch glimpses of them from the 

 quarries in the foot-hills where most of us 

 are toiling. And such moments of larger 



