Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/395

 EI8T0BICAL CONTINUITY OF SCIENCE 3«

��THE HISTOBICAL CONTINUITY OF SCIENCE

Bt Pbofbssob T. BRAILSFORI) ROBERTSON

UNIYSBSITZ OF CALIFOBNLA

Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

— (Tennyaon^

FBOM the time that man first entered upon those labors which were to earn him that rich heritage of ciyilization which we own to-day two groups of objects presented themselyes to his senses and his in- telligence^ each demanding^ for sheer seU-preservationy the closest study his intellect could furnish. The one group comprised his fellow-men, the other the sum total of objects and phenomena which comprised his non-himian environment. From the study of the former group arose the juridical and political institutions of man, while from the study of the latter group arose his religions and his science. The motives urging him to these studies were the primeval instincts of self-preserva- tion and curiosity, but unanticipated advantages accrued therefrom to the most successful students; from the first group of studies sprang the conquest, subjection and exploitation of less gifted or less fortunate members of his species, while from the second group of studies sprang the conquest and the interpretation of nature.

In one of his classical essays Huxley, for the purpose of expounding and illustrating the methods employed in his chosen field of investiga- tion, has told us the story of Zadig, an illustrious philosopher and astrologer of ancient days, who by the minute observation and com- parison of facts which were at first sight unrelated, was able to trace and restore to his imperial master the favorite horse and dog, the loss of which had constituted a national calamity the magnitude of which may well be imagined. But the illustration which was thus employed by Huxley to describe the methods of investigation employed in one particular field of scientific research might equally well have been em- ployed to illustrate the discipline of thought in any other field of in- vestigation. Observation, comparison, deduction and trial the success or failure of which inspires and directs further observations which form the starting-point of a new and wider cast of his net into the sea of the unknown, these are the successive steps in the discipline of thought which has slowly and inevitably led man from helpless dependency upon the caprice of nature to the present day when his words travel with the speed of light and his instruments pierce the depths of inter- stellar space.

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