Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/370

356 I am careful to deal with this point at the outset, because it removes any difficulty which might arise from the question of the relative value, commercial or otherwise, of various departments of science, or of different discoveries in any given department. Regarding science as a means of culture, all scientific discoveries are valuable, though not all equally so. Some which are least useful in the ordinary sense are preëminently valuable in this respect. To take an example from astronomy: Although it would be difficult to say that any scientific discovery cannot possibly confer material benefit on the human race, I suppose no discovery could promise less in this way than Sir W. Herschel's recognition of wide-spreading nebulosity in certain regions of the heavens. Follow out, however, the train of thought that this discovery suggests, and it will be found that the discovery has had an influence by no means insignificant in dispossessing ideas which have wrought in their day incalculable mischief. As Draper has well said, in his "Conflict between Religion and Science," the nebular hypothesis rests primarily on this discovery; and the recognition of the truth of that hypothesis compels us "to extend our views of the dominion of law, and to recognize its agency in the creation as well as in the conservation of the innumerable orbs that throng the universe." Is this recognition of the reign of law barren? Let the reader of the history of the last five hundred years consider only what would have been the influence, throughout that interval, of a clearly-defined and widely-spread belief in the dominion of law, and he will neither hesitate how to reply, nor question the value of such a belief in future ages. The doctrine of the universality of law, once understood by the masses, cannot but prove a safeguard against excesses such as have been and continue to be committed in the name of religion—a safeguard even against the very existence of the superstitions to which such excesses are due. The belief in universal law, regarded by many in these days as a rock ahead, will be one day recognized as a breakwater against seas which have been heavy and may be heavy yet again.

In this way of estimating the value of science, and therefore the importance of scientific research, we may find an answer to the difficulty which presents itself when we consider the actual position of scientific workers—the fact, namely, that the search for scientific truth affords the worker no direct means of maintenance. A man may give many years of labor to discover some great law of Nature, or some important scientific fact, and when he has achieved success he may find that his discovery is his sole reward. This, indeed, may be the sole reward he has wrought for. Indeed, I think the true student of science would wish to dissociate from his special subject of research all idea of material reward. Yet it is as true of the minister and interpreter of Nature as of the minister and interpreter of religion, that "the laborer is worthy of his hire."