The Utility of the Useless. 67 
have demonstrated the necessity for following custom if the safety of the 
community or herd is to be ensured. 
Admitting the operation of the “Herd Instinct,’ it is not difficult to 
appreciate the reason of that opposition to innovation which is so well and 
so frequently illustrated in the history of scientific discovery. For our 
present purpose, however, it is not so much necessary to explain the cause 
of opposition as to recognise its reality. Realisation of its occurrence and 
effect in the past renders more easily borne its encounter in the present. 
No department of science contains more mysteries for the layman than 
does electricity. And no department of physical science contains more 
striking examples of pure academic research paving the way for the introduc- 
tion of enormously important instruments of applied science. 
The discovery of the deflection of a magnet by the passage of an electric 
current along a wire in its vicinity—a discovery which, as Faraday expressed it, 
“burst open the gates of a domain in science, dark till now, and filled it with 
a flood of light”’—could not have been made had not Volta devised the 
means whereby a constant and steady current could be produced. Nor, 
without the same means, could Francois Arago have discovered that a bar 
of iron becomes a magnet when surrounded by a coil of wire through 
which an electric current is flowing. | 
If Volta’s investigations made possible research capable of revealing the 
industrial applicability of electricity, it may be claimed that Volta, in his 
turn, was indebted to the old frictional machine for a basis upon which to 
found his inquiries. Tracing the chain of research still further back, all the 
earlier discoveries depended upon an observation made by William Gilbert, 
of Colchester, one of the lesser sons of the Renaissance. If it is true to say 
that none of these inquiries was made in the utilitarian spirit, it is equally true 
to assert that Faraday’s discovery of magneto-electric induction was the product 
of research undertaken from purely academic motives. When Faraday’s 
sacrifices to science are remembered, it is not difficult to realise that his 
work was not stimulated by a desire for personal profit. That mankind in 
general has profited, and that the wealth of nations has been augmented, is 
abundantly evident. 
When Sir Anthony Carlisle and Mr Nicholson made their extemporised 
Voltaic pile, and observed the decomposition of water by the current produced, 
they could not possibly have foreseen that by their speculative laboratory 
experiments they were laying the foundation of those enormous commercial 
industries which depend upon electrolysis. Much less is it conceivable that 
an enthusiastic youth of eighteen, endeavouring to make artificial quinine 
by the oxidation of aniline, could-have foreseen that his accidental discovery 
