i88i.] The Ethics of Invention. 721 
With practical art, or what is sometimes called “ applied 
science,” the case is totally different. The objeCt sought is 
not the increase of knowledge, but the promotion of material 
convenience, comfort, luxury, and power. Truths ascer- 
tained are valued not for themselves, but in so far as they 
admit of or promise some application. To this end the 
faCts and the laws ascertained by Science are carefully scru- 
tinised. Still it is an error to suppose that Art is a neces- 
sary consequence of Science. On the contrary, it is probably 
the elder of the two. Industrial processes were carried out 
at first empirically. Continued attempts led to certain re- 
sults, though the principles upon which such results depended 
remained unknown for ages. As an instance I may mention 
the process of Turkey-red dyeing, which has been success- 
fully carried out for a couple of centuries, but is even yet 
scarce fully understood. Art and Science are not necessarily 
connected with each other, either in place or time. A 
country might be rich in such men as Newton, Faraday, or 
Dar.win : it might make rapid progress in pure Science, and 
yet its outward material existence might be poor and sta- 
tionary, and its high thinking might be accompanied by very 
plain living. Again, modern advances in Art are not neces- 
sarily connected with any modern development of Science. 
Take, for instance, the revolver, which a smart writer in a 
daily paper not long ago took occasion to characterise as 
“ one of the questionable gifts of modern Science.” So far 
is this from being the case that a weapon essentially the 
same was in being about three centuries ago ! 
Science and Art, then, pursue respectively distinct objects, 
and with distinct motives. Every step in advance taken by 
the former is a discovery ; every movement effected by the 
latter is an invention. Now a discovery, as such, has no 
moral bearings. The desire to know is neither virtuous nor 
vicious ; not even between the two, but standing altogether 
on a different plane. Nor does the possession of abstract 
knowledge in the least modify human character. Suppose — 
and it is a fairly strong supposition — that I should next year 
decompose our present elementary bodies, and present to 
the world something worth calling a new chemistry. Yet 
neither I, the originator of the new discovery, nor any of 
the multitudes of people who would hear of it, fix it in their 
memories, examine the evidence on which it rests, and in- 
corporate it in manuals and hand-books, would be morally 
one hair’s breadth the better or the worse. But an invention 
has, or may have, a moral phase. It does something that 
was not done — could not be done — before, and that something 
