Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/222

208 particular that its influence will be most pronounced and most beneficial in the intellectual life of the world at large.

This little essay has been intended simply to give some of the most important principles of veracity in a purely abstract statement. Special questions and problems have, therefore, been purposely left untouched. All moralists, it may be assumed, will agree that, in the actual ordering of life, there are occasions when not only are we not called upon to speak the truth, but when even by direct lying we incur no proper reproach. To mislead the would-be robber concerning the exact whereabouts of the family plate is clearly justifiable; and so, too, is the false statement of his condition by means of which, as every physician knows, a patient is often given a better chance of recovery. Numerous cases of these or other kinds will occur in common experience; there is unfortunately no single rule of conduct which can be taken as inflexible and universal in its applicability; and we must each of us face the individual crisis when it arises as best we can. But meanwhile it may be useful sometimes to consider general and fundamental principles in ethics without relating them to exceptional issues. After indulging in such a discussion as the foregoing we may, it is possible, be inclined to say that, as Rasselas was convinced by Imlac that no human being could ever be a poet, so are we fully convinced that we can never be wholly and consistently truthful. Yet it may help us none the less to have the ideal distinctly set before us, and whatever difficulties may be in the way of our approach to it, it will never cease to be our duty to hold it steadily and bravely in view.

Heinrich Hertz had gone to Munich to study engineering in 1877, he wrote back to his parents that he wanted to change his plans and return to the study of natural science. He felt that the time had come either to devote himself to this entirely or else to say good-by to it; for if he gave up too much time to science in the future it would end in his neglecting his professional studies and becoming a second-rate engineer. His parents consented to his desire and his course of studies was changed in conformity to it. A year later he wrote from the laboratory that the greater part of the time spent there was devoted to "things which are very useless, or at any rate don't teach one much, such as cutting cork and tiling wires, and the observations themselves are naturally not very delightful. Possibly it may be doubtful whether it is quite right for me to spend so much time at these things when I still have so much to learn. And yet I feel that it is right; to get information for myself and for others dii-ect from Nature gives me so much more satisfaction than to be always learning it from others and for myself alone—so much more that I can hardly express it. When I am only studying books I am never free of the feeling that I am a perfectly useless member of society."