Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/725

Rh thought of to-day. "The great deeds of philosophers," says Prof. Huxley, "are less the fruit of their intellect than of the direction of that intellect by an eminently religious state of mind."

Consider the characteristics demanded in the successful study of Nature, and we shall discern the spiritual source whence these physical triumphs come.

One of the first requisites in the inductive method is the humble-mindedness that will completely submit itself to the evidence of the facts. "Access to the kingdom of man, which is founded on the sciences," Bacon aptly says, "resembles that to the kingdom of heaven, where no admission is conceded except to children."

Another condition of success is the spirit of industry that is unswerved by love of ease or idea of labor's dishonor. Another, again, is the candor that will look on all sides of a case, and listen to every objection—consecration to truth as the primary object. These are the qualities which men of science set forth as the requisites for walking within the veil of the temple of Nature.

But what else are these than the very graces of Christianity? Take the childlike mind that the founder of the inductive method demands: it is just what Christ enjoins. Take the fearless love of truth that seeks the absolute facts—the cause behind the cause. How long would it hold on its way did not spiritual aspiration ever feed its secret springs with the insatiable hunger after perfection? Take that diligence in labor and honorable estimation of work which is one of the essential instruments of scientific work, and ask what is the impulse that has endowed modern Christendom with it. "Labor," as a German writer of weight has well pointed out, "was considered by our heathen forefathers a dishonor; and even in the present day, where the gospel is not preached, the stirring disposition, the assiduity, the spirit of enterprise in the people, is disproportionately less. The duty and dignity of work is one of the priceless gifts to modern science of him who said, 'My Father is working up to this time, and I work.'"

Or consider that interest in Nature that is such a powerful spring of physical inquiry. Consider that sacred claim of his vocation which the true servant recognizes—such a sense of it as leads a Lyonnet to spend his life counting the 40,000 muscles in a caterpillar's body! Is it not the Christian spirit, the belief, that is, in the brotherhood of man and the duty of self-sacrifice—the feeling of filial loyalty to a Divine Father, all of whose works are significant, and all of whose service is noble—that, as much as or more than anything else, has given birth to it?

It is a singular fact that the Greek and the Roman, in spite of their great intellectual acuteness, accomplished so little in the penetration of Nature's secrets. With the strong love of the beautiful that distinguished the one, and the profound sense of law that marked the