Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/377

Rh to devise a cure for tuberculosis or cancer. In his research he must think of something higher even than saving life or promoting health, or he is likely to prove a failure at the lower level also.

As an example of the wrong attitude of mind towards science, there may be taken the point of view of those utilitarians who complain of the amount of time and discussion at present being given to the problem of the origin of life. These wiseacres with limitations to their brains say "that it is an insoluble problem, we shall never get to the bottom of it, let us simply assume, since it is here, that life did originate somehow, and, taking this as an axiom, proceed to some practical experimental problem; the origination of life does not lend itself to experimental inquiry."

Now it is, strange to say, just those problems that appear most insoluble upon which the inquiring type of mind loves to linger and spend its energies, and, although the problems never may be solved, the misty solitudes to which they lead are glorious and the fitful gleams of half-sunshine that come through are more kindling to the senses of such men than the brightest sunshine on the barest of hills. It is here, and in such quests, that the biggest of human discoveries are made and not all of them are in natural science alone.

The search after the mystery and origin of life had profound influence in raising man from a savage to a civilized human being, and is found as an integral part in all religions above a certain level of savagery. Much of the system of morals and ethics of civilized nations is unconsciously grouped round this problem, and we owe the existence of that social conscience which makes each of us our race's keeper to our interest in the nature of life, and our ties with other lives. Leave such a problem alone and attend to routine researches! Why, the human intellect can not do it, such problems compel attention! What, it may be asked, was it that started all this routine research in biology, in favor of which we are asked to abandon the search after the origin of life? The routine research would not exist, but for a discovery made in investigating whether life originated in a certain alleged way.

If the whole science of bacteriology emerged from a proof that a certain alley did not lead to the origin of life, how much more glorious may that knowledge become that finally leads us to this goal, or even one step onward in our true path towards it. The search after the origin of life is an experimental inquiry, it leads straight to research, that is all the physicist or chemist demands of a theory, it should be enough for the biologist. We who search for this are not occultists whatever may be said of those who oppose.

Let us then learn to have a catholic spirit about research, and try to convince the world that it commands devotion not merely because of material advantages which it may bring, but because it is the most