THE ETHICS OF SOCIOLOGY. 
189 
making themselves felt in legislative enactments. The Acts 
of Parliament passed for the protection of bird life ; the pre¬ 
vention of cruelty to animals; the preservation and develop¬ 
ment of river and sea fish, with the resulting sympathy 
excited in the human breast on behalf of forms of life within 
our power to destroy, are mainly due to the work of the 
naturalist. He it is who tells us what with safety to 
ourselves we should let live for food, companionship, or 
beauty. 
Thus, through the naturalist, are we linked in mind as 
in body with everything around us. The more desirous are 
we to avoid unnecessary cruelty, the strength of which 
desire is one of the surest tests of civilisation and progress, 
If the geologist desired but to count the strata of the earth’s 
crust; if the botanist only cared to enumerate orders, species, 
and varieties of vegetal life ; if the zoologist and the chemist 
had no higher aims than to discover variety of form and force, 
surely lives so spent would be lives wasted in that which 
would be profitless. 
But such is not the case. That which we call civilisa¬ 
tion is an edifice constructed of materials hewn out of every 
branch of human study and elucidation. 
Each department of Nature is a series of well-fitting 
sections of a glorious picture-puzzle. Each earnest student may 
discover and place in its right position some portion of that 
picture. Happy is he in proportion to his success in adding 
to the grandeur of the whole. The smallest measure of success 
becomes a germ for subsequent development. Progress may 
be slow,—it is indeed often slowest in that which is of most 
general and permanent benefit,—but it is none the less sure. 
As I become more intimately acquainted with the loving 
devotion to their respective studies on the part of our 
specialists, I am reminded of a question even yet to be heard 
from the lips of those who, perhaps of all others, derive most 
benefit from scientific research—I mean those who utilise, but 
do not discover. The men to whom the acquisition of the 
material wealth of others is the sole incentive to energy of 
mind and body, and who to that end avail themselves of 
what the scientist has discovered—in tones not unmixed with 
envy, such people ask “In what does your science help you to 
get on ? ” 
Now, “get on” is a very indefinite phrase. If for its 
definition I question the Ascetic in religion, he will tell me 
that to “get on” is to progress in the substitution of spiritual 
for material desires. 
If I ask the Commercial Ascetic he unhesitatingly affirms 
