Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/206

196 in physics who can not speak the truth? a leader in natural history who is given over to the torments of envy? a god in chemical research sick of some false quotation? a youthful prodigy of mathematical science tottering with unelastic steps and outstretched arms to grasp his future fame? Yet no one will deny that the intemperate pursuit of any branch of science has a tendency to produce such characters, by elevating to undue importance the individual accumulation of scientific facts and scientific theories, to the neglect and depreciation of that spirit of truth which alone can inspire and justify an earnest study of the material universe. I beg you to reflect that it is as true of science as of religion, that the mere letter of its code threatens its devotee with intellectual death, and that only by breathing its purest spirit can the man of science keep his better character alive—that indefinable spirit which, in its intimate and essential nature, has little to do with the number of facts discovered or theories accepted; a spirit which merely exercises itself in research, and accepts discoveries as delightful accidents; a spirit which walks the paths of science, not as if they were turnpikes converging upon some smoky and squalid focus of toil-wearied population, but as if they had been graveled and flower bordered for it through some princely park; a spirit of natural and cultivated nobleness, sweetened by boundless friendship for the world and all that lives therein; just and true to all men worthy or unworthy, proud without vanity, industrious without haste, stating its own griefs as lightly as an angel might, and generously bringing help to the discouraged and forlorn. In every one of us there is this genius, if we did but know it; and, as Emerson well says, the moral is the measure of its health.

I have been saying, then, that we should pursue science, like any other business of this life, with a distinct and unwavering intention to ennoble our own characters. It were a trite addition to propose that the pursuit be made ancillary to the public good. "The love of science" is a phrase which has been greatly glorified in popular discourse; and if the phrase be confined to its true meaning—a zealous admiration for all that is beautifully true and useful in Nature—it can not harm us in the practice of our profession. But when the imagination has exhausted itself in transcendental ecstasies over an ethereal sentiment so named, but undescribed except in poetry, what wiser or better thing can we say of any branch of physical or natural science, cultivated by our association, than that its votaries arc knowingly or unknowingly bettering the condition and character of mankind? Every advancement in science is, of its own nature, an improvement of the commonwealth. Every successful study of the laws of the world we inhabit inevitably brings about a more intelligent and victorious conflict with the material evils of life, encouraging thoughtfulness, discouraging superstition, exposing the folly of vice, and putting the multitudes of human society on a fairer and friendlier footing with one another.