720 
The Ethics of Invention. 
[December, 
pro tanto, poisonous also in the smallest, he shows that, as 
far as his experiments extend, all soluble salts — including 
those naturally present in the blood and taken in our food — 
are poisonous if administered in a sufficient dose. This 
truth does not come as a novelty to scientific physiologists, 
but to no small number of semi-scientific writers and orators 
it will be both new and unpleasant. 
We have a further remark to add : the method of M. 
Richet — the immersion of fishes in water containing known 
proportions of deleterious matter — has been independently, 
and we believe from an earlier date, made use of by an 
English experimentalist, although from a different point of 
view, under which it is the only process possible. 
IV. THE ETHICS OF INVENTION. 
By An Old Technologist. 
BEFORE attempting an examination of the questions 
aE) involved in this subject, I must, as a preliminary, 
^ ^ settle the distinction between the loosely-used terms 
“ discovery ” and “ invention,” which again presupposes a 
recognition of the difference between Science and Industrial 
Art. This difference, in spite of the full light thrown upon 
it by Whewell, John Stuart Mill, Sir J. Herschell, Comte, 
and others, the British public refuses to grasp. We still 
hear steam-navigation and railroads, revolvers and torpedoes, 
the Jacquard loom and artificial alizarin, and even the per- 
formances of “ Farini’s Zazel ” and the “ eagle-swoop ” of 
Maraz spoken of as triumphs of Science. Yet the distinc- 
tion is most simple and natural. The objeCt and purpose of 
Science is simply to know everything that actually or poten- 
tially exists : it examines their properties, their mutual rela- 
tions, and, not content with asking what exists, it proposes 
and seeks to solve the questions how it exists and what has 
called it into existence ! But all this is done without any 
reference to human convenience or wishes, without any 
attempt to apply the knowledge gained to any purpose, 
good or evil. The results of Science are expressed not in 
receipts or working directions, but in phenomena recorded 
and in theories demonstrated. 
