Man does not live by bread alone, and science brings him more than bread. It is a great thing to make two blades of grass grow where before one alone grew; but it is no less great a thing to help a man to come to a just conclusion on the questions with which he has to deal. We may claim for science that, while she is doing the one, she may be so used as to do the other also. The dictum just quoted, that science is organized common sense, may be read as meaning that the common problems of life, which common people have to solve, are to be solved by the same methods by which the man of science solves his special problems. It follows that the training which does so much for him may be looked to as promising to do much for them.
Such aid can come from science on two conditions only. In the first place, this her influence must be acknowledged; she must be duly recognized as a teacher no less than as a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. And the pursuit of science must be followed, not by the professional few only, but at least in such measure as will ensure the influence of example by the many. But this latter point I need not urge before this great association, whose chief object during more than half a century has been to bring within the fold of science all who would answer to the call. In the second place, it must be understood that the training to be looked for from science is the outcome, not of the accumulation of scientific knowledge, but of the practice of scientific inquiry. Man may have at his fingers’ ends all the accomplished results and all the current opinions of any one or of all the branches of science, and yet remain wholly unscientific in mind; but no one can have carried out even the humblest research without the spirit of science in some measure resting upon him. And that spirit may in part be caught even without entering upon an actual investigation in search of a new truth. The learner may be led to old truths, even the oldest, in more ways than one. He may be brought abruptly to a truth in its finished form, coming straight to it like a thief climbing over the wall; and the hurry and press of modern life tempt many to adopt this quicker way. Or he may be more slowly guided along the path by which the truth was reached by him who first laid hold of it. It is by this latter way of learning the truth, and by this alone, that the learner may hope to catch something at least of the spirit of the scientific inquirer.
This is not the place, nor have I the wish, to plunge into the turmoil of controversy; but if there be any truth in what I have been urging, then they are wrong who think that in the schooling of the young science can be used with profit only to train those for whom science will be the means of earning their bread. It may be that, from the point of view of pedagogic art, the experience of generations has fashioned out of the older studies of literature an instrument of discipline of unusual power, and that the teaching of science is as yet but a rough tool in unpractised hands. That, however, is not an adequate reason why scope should not be given for science to show the value which we claim for it as an intellectual training fitted for all sorts and conditions of men. Nor need the studies of humanity and literature fear her presence in the schools; for if her friends maintain that the teaching is one-sided, and therefore misleading, which deals with the doings of man only, and is silent about the works of nature, in the sight of which he and his doings shrink almost to nothing, she herself would be the first to admit that that teaching is equally wrong which deals only with the works of nature and says nothing about the doings of man, who is, to us at least, nature’s centre.
There is yet another general aspect of science on which I would crave leave to say a word. In that broad field of human life which we call politics, in the struggle, not of man with man, but of race with race, science works for good. If we look only on the surface, it may at first sight seem otherwise. In no branch of science has there during these later years been greater activity and more rapid progress than in that which furnishes the means by which man brings death, suffering, and disaster on his fellow men. If the healer can look with pride on the increased power which science has given him to alleviate human suffering and ward off the miseries of disease, the destroyer can look with still greater pride on the power which science has given him to sweep away lives and to work desolation and ruin; while the one has slowly been learning to save units, the other has quickly learned to slay thousands. But, happily, the very greatness of the modern power of destruction is already becoming a bar to its use, and bids fair—may we hope before long—wholly to put an end to it; in the words of Tacitus, though in another sense, the very preparations for war, through the character which science gives them, make for peace.
Moreover, not in one branch of science only, but in all, there is a deep undercurrent of influence sapping the very foundations of all war. As I have already urged, no feature of scientific inquiry is more marked than the dependence of each step forward on other steps which have been made before. The man of science cannot sit by himself in his own cave, weaving out results by his own efforts, unaided by others, heedless of what others have done and are doing. He is but a bit of a great system, a joint in a great machine, and he can only work aright when he is in due touch with his fellow workers. If his labor is to be what it ought to be, and is to have the weight which it ought to have, he must know what is being done, not by himself, but by others, and by others not of his own land and speaking his tongue only, but also of other lands and of other speech. Hence it comes about that to the man of science the barriers of manners and of speech which pen men into nations become more and more unreal and indistinct. He recognizes his fellow worker, wherever he may live, and whatever tongue he may speak, as one who is pushing forward shoulder to shoulder with him toward a common goal, as one whom he is helping and who is helping him. The touch of science makes the whole world kin.
The history of the past gives us many examples of this brotherhood of science. In the revival of learning throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and some way on into the eighteenth century, the common use of the Latin tongue made intercourse easy. In some respects, in those earlier days science was more cosmopolitan than it afterwards became. In spite of the difficulties and hardships of travel, the men of science of different lands again and again met each other face to face, heard with their ears, and saw with their eyes, what their brethren had to say or show. The Englishman took the long journey to Italy to study there; the Italian, the Frenchman, and the German wandered from one seat of learning to another; and many a man held a chair in a country not his own. There was help, too, as well as intercourse. The Royal Society of London took upon itself the task of publishing nearly all the works of the great Italian, Malpighi; and the brilliant Lavoisier, two years before his own countrymen in their blind fury slew him, received from the same body the highest token which it could give of its esteem.
In these closing years of the nineteenth century this great need of mutual knowledge and of common action felt by men of science of different lands is being manifested in a special way. Though nowadays what is done anywhere is soon known everywhere, the news of a discovery being often flashed over the globe by telegraph, there is an increasing activity in the direction of organization to promote international meetings and international coöperation. In almost every science, inquirers from many lands now gather together at stated intervals, in international congresses, to discuss matters which they have in common at heart, and go away, each one feeling strengthened by having met his brother. The desire that, in the struggle to lay bare the secrets of nature, the least waste of human energy should be incurred, is leading more and more to the concerted action of nations combining to attack problems the solution of which is difficult and costly. The determination of standards of measurement, magnetic surveys, the solution of great geodetic problems, the mapping of the heavens and of the earth—all these are being carried on by international organizations.
One international scientific effort demands a word of notice. The need which every inquirer in science feels to know, and to know quickly, what his fellow worker, wherever on the globe he may be carrying on his work or making known his results, has done or is doing, led some four years back to a proposal for carrying out by international coöperation a complete current index, issued promptly, of the scientific literature of the world. Though much labor in many lands has been spent upon the undertaking, the project is not yet an accomplished fact. Nor can this, perhaps, be wondered at, when the difficulties of the task are weighed. Difficulties of language, difficulties of driving in one team all the several sciences which, like young horses, wish each to have its head free with leave to go its own way, difficulties mechanical and financial, of press and post, difficulties raised by existing interests—these and yet other difficulties are obstacles not easy to be overcome. The most striking and the most encouraging features of the deliberations which have now been going on for three years have been the repeated expressions, coming not from this or that quarter only, but from almost all quarters, of an earnest desire that the effort should succeed, of a sincere belief in the good of international coöperation, and of a willingness to sink as far as possible individual interests for the sake of the common cause. In the face of such a spirit we may surely hope that the many difficulties will ultimately pass out of sight.