Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/369

Rh Tyndall has well said, "is as necessary and irresistible as the motion of the tides or the flowing of the Gulf Stream. It is a phase of the energy of Nature, and, as such, is sure in due time to compel the recognition of those who now decry its influence and discourage its advance."

That science is worthy of endowment will be admitted by every one competent to form an opinion. Yet I would remark, at the outset, that the reasons sometimes advanced by students of science in support of this proposition are not of the worthiest, though they may be those best calculated to secure the alliance of the unscientific. Even Tyndall has spoken of science as though its chief value resided in its quality as "a source of individual and national might;" and many have dwelt on its value as a means of adding to material wealth. It would be affectation to contemn such considerations, but assuredly they do not present the noblest qualities of science, the chief good which science is competent to work. It is as a potent means of culture that science is worthiest of recognition. The material gain derived from scientific research has no doubt been great; but it has been incalculably surpassed in value by the change which science has worked and is working in the minds of men. It is, indeed, precisely in this respect that unscientific persons most completely misapprehend the work which science is doing. They attach special value to those things which science is silently but certainly displacing. They are pained by the light which science is pouring on objects that had seemed venerable so long as their defects had been veiled under the gloom of ignorance. They are appalled when science would teach them to displace all false loyalties by the noblest loyalty of all—loyalty to the truth. But the student of science can deal with such errors as he would deal with errors of observation or with untrustworthy experiments. He is not concerned to war against them. To be angry with them would be as unscientific as to be angry with gravitation. The true teachings of science will be recognized in due time—with results easily foretold. It was predicted that the religion of mercy would bring, not peace, but a sword; the seemingly stern religion of truth will bring, not a sword, but peace into the world. To recognize the universal reign of law is to perceive the futility of lawlessness, no matter under what high or even sacred names disguised. The culture of man through the study of truth is the work of science in the future. And scientific research derives incalculably greater value from the fact that it affords material for scientific culture than because it may add to national or individual power, or become a means of increasing our store of material wealth. Even the benefits derived from those departments of science which tend most to ameliorate the condition of the masses, great though these benefits unquestionably are, must be esteemed small by comparison with those which will hereafter be derived from science as a means of mental and moral culture.