g6 Mr. Henry Wilde on a 



So closely has this work been followed up in some depart- 

 ments of science, by a laudable spirit of emulation 

 engendered by various scientific organisations, that the 

 reputation of some specialists rests almost entirely upon the 

 determination of a small fractional difference in a dimen- 

 sion, or in some fundamental property of an elementary 

 substance. 



The microscopic habit of mind induced by this extreme 

 precision in weighing and measuring, as I have already 

 pointed out, constitutes a real danger to the progress of 

 natural knowledge, as it may render a specialist totally 

 incapable of taking broad views of his own science. For 

 let some one of these be told that, from a theory 

 founded upon numerous observations and resting upon a 

 basis as unassailable as the law of gravitation, that a 

 particular numerical relation which he has determined 

 with so much care and labour, and for which he has, 

 perhaps, been rewarded by some academic distinction, so 

 far from being correct to a fractional quantity, is not even 

 correct to the unit's place, all the arguments that can be 

 used will be as little able to prevail with him, as the wind 

 did with the traveller to part with his cloak, which he only 

 held the faster* 



Happily for the progress of science the numerical 

 constants of nature are not the property of the class of 

 specialists who determine them, as is too often assumed, 

 but belong to the commonwealth of learning which the 

 cultivators of every department of knowledge are free to 

 use and reason upon, for the general advancement of science 

 and the good of mankind. 



* Lest it should be inferred that I unduly subordinate the arduous labour 

 of exact measurements to theories derived from observation, I may say 

 that much of my own experimental work in several branches of science has 

 been of this character : — Phil. Trans., 1867. Memoirs Lit. Phil. Soc, 

 Manch., Vol. XXX. Phil. Mag., 1885, 1886. Roy. Soc. Proc, 1891, 

 1 89.1, 1894- 



