Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/779

Rh I love dogs for themselves; I have as much compassion as any one can have for them when they are suffering; I know by experience that their friendship is a precious resource in solitude; but, however, much I may feel for dogs, I should never hesitate to sacrifice the dearest pet among them all for the existence of a human being, even were the man unknown to me, or the lowest of savages. Hesitation as between a dog and a man is not permissible. We owe aid and love to the beings who are nearest to us, in the degree that they are nearer, to a Frenchman more than to a Chinese, to a man more than to an animal. We are all of the great human family, to all the individuals of which we owe justice and assistance, while we owe to animals pity and protection only when they involve no harm to our human brethren.

The principal object of science, and particularly of physiological science, is to be useful to men. Knowledge of the laws of Nature alone can help us to assuage the miseries of our existence. Every step of progress in our knowledge leads in the end to a forward step in our career. Even though we may not immediately comprehend the practical utility of a particular discovery, it will eventually bear a sure fruit. The innumerable and mysterious facts of the medium in which we live are subject to fixed laws that are only imperfectly known. All our efforts should tend to elucidate these laws; and science—that is, the investigation of the grand laws of Nature—seems to be one of the principal functions of human energy. A very high value should, therefore, be set upon everything that aids the progress of science.

It is an erroneous view of science to expect that it shall at once give a result useful, palpable, and precise, or an instantaneous practical application. Science has nothing to do with utility; or, rather, the true utilitarians are those whose hopes are in future science. They are forced to respect the science of to-day, even when it appears useless, because it is bringing us nearer to the science of to-morrow, which alone can effect some great alleviation to human suffering.

Who could have conceived, when Galvani announced that, on touching the foot of a frog with copper and zinc, he provoked contractions of its muscles, that this little fact would lead, by a remarkable series of discoveries, to the invention of the galvanic battery, electric telegraphy, and dynamic electricity? If Galvani had not observed the feet of frogs, the electric telegraph would never have existed, nor the electric light, nor any of those marvelous machines which constitute one of the greatest series of forces man now has at his disposal. Yet, at the moment Galvani was making his discovery, would we not, at least apparently, have had a right to condemn his sterile and bloody experiments? What benefit could men gain from a massacre of frogs strung along a balcony-rail?

Every new discovery, however trivial it may seem at first, is big with discoveries to come. One truth is the germ of innumerable