230 



Physical Sciences. 



and marked the path for his fellows to follow. And all the gross 

 conveniences of his savage home are the results of many such steps 

 by succeeding generations. And rude as these products of his thought 

 are, they are uulike in kind the perfect work of the iustinct-guided 

 beasts and birds around him, and have in tliem the germs of all civil- 

 ized productions. They give promise of unending progress, not by 

 their perfection — for the works of bird and insect far surpass them — 

 but they give evidence of unending progress because they show their 

 maker's power to go before the act in tliouglit, to consider material 

 products in relation to his wants, and to meet these wants by contriv- 

 ance of his own, originating new combinations and yet building upon 

 the experience of those who have contrived before him. 



But in savage life much of the study of nature's forces and of her 

 products has arisen from bodily wants alone. The plainest utility has 

 marked every step of the savage, except in his rude attempts at art. 

 Science for its oion sake, tliouglit for its oiun sake, producing results 

 for the present unusable, are to him apparently unknown. It is only 

 when these are found, the cultivation of thought for its own sake, 

 that we have the first gleam of that intellectual progress of which the 

 present civilization is both the offspring and parent. Thought or 

 investigation for its own sake, the love of knowledge as an" end, is 

 the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that has 

 guided the race in its onward march in civilization, while iitility 

 alone would have kept it forever in the desert of savage or half-civilized 

 life. In this realm of pure investigation, the leaders of the race have 

 labored since there was any promise of a science, and long before science 

 gave promise of utility. In that same realm the leaders still walk 

 to-day. The world is enriching itself now with the products of their 

 former labors — labors performed when this same world sneered at 

 them as useless. The laborers themselves come back from time to 

 time to gather the products of former labors, as a means of advancing 

 still farther. But should they heed the cry of these wise men, the 

 practical men," falsely so called, and remain in the realm of mere 

 practical utility of to-day, all progress would stop and our civilization 

 would become fixed, like that of China and Hindostan. Not a single 

 physical science can be named that has not been built up by the labors 

 of men who were seeking for truth, while their labors were considered 

 puerile and ridiculous by mere utilitarians. And the best scientific 

 results of the present day, which have not yet borne fruit, the ques- 

 tions that engage the attention of our scientists, are recounted with 

 the same sneers and ridicule by those who claim to be practically wise, 

 as Avere observations in geology and experiments in electricity a century 

 ago. Every great advance in practical science in the last half century • 



