Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/254

244 steam has become the circulatory and electricity the nervous system. The colonies, being young countries, value their raw materials as their chief sources of wealth. When they become older they will discover it is not on those, but on the culture of scientific intellect, that their future prosperity depends. Older nations recognize this as the law of progress more than we do; or, as Jules Simon tersely puts it, "That nation which most educates her people will become the greatest nation, if not to-day, certainly to-morrow," Higher education is the condition of higher prosperity, and the nation which neglects to develop the intellectual factor of production must degenerate, for it can not stand still. If we felt compelled to adopt the test of science given by Corate, that its value must be measured by fecundity, it might be prudent to claim industrial inventions as the immediate fruit of the tree of science, though only fruit which the prolific tree has shed. But the test is untrue in the sense indicated, or rather the fruit, according to the simile of Bacon, is like the golden apples which Aphrodite gave to the suitor of Atalanta, who lagged in his course by stooping to pick them up, and so lost the race. The true cultivators of the tree of science must seek their own reward by seeing it flourish, and let others devote their attention to the possible practical advantages which may result from their labors.

There is, however, one intimate connection between science and industry which I hope will be more intimate as scientific education becomes more prevalent in our schools and universities. Abstract science depends upon the support of men of leisure, either themselves possessing or having provided for them the means of living without entering into the pursuits of active industry. The pursuit of science requires a superfluity of wealth in a community beyond the needs of ordinary life. Such superfluity is also necessary for art, though a picture or a statue is a salable commodity, while an abstract discovery in science has no immediate or, as regards the discoverer, proximate commercial value. In Greece, when philosophical and scientific speculation was at its highest point, and when education was conducted in its own vernacular and not through dead languages, science, industry, and commerce were actively prosperous. Corinth carried on the manufactures of Birmingham and Sheffield, while Athens combined those of Leeds, Staffordshire, and London, for it had woolen manufactures, potteries, gold and silver work, as well as ship-building. Their philosophers were the sons of burghers, and sometimes carried on the trades of their fathers. Thales was a traveling oil-merchant, who brought back science as well as oil from Egypt. Solon and his great descendant, Plato, as well as Zeno, were men of commerce. Socrates was a stone-mason; Thucydides a gold-miner; Aristotle kept a druggist's shop until Alexander endowed him with the wealth of Asia. All but Socrates had a superfluity of wealth, and he was supported by that of others. Now, if our universities and schools created that love