e you, applaud you, ask you to our houses; and you shall
be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously with us every
day. I know not whether these latter are not the worst enemies which
science has. They are often such excellent, respectable, orderly, well-
meaning persons. They desire so sincerely that everyone should be wise:
only not too wise. They are so utterly unaware of the mischief they are
doing. They would recoil with horror if they were told they were so many
Iscariots, betraying Truth with a kiss.

But science, as yet, has withstood both terrors and blandishments. In
old times, she endured being imprisoned and slain. She came to life
again. Perhaps it was the will of Him in whom all things live, that she
should live. Perhaps it was His spirit which gave her life.

She can endure, too, being starved. Her votaries have not as yet cared
much for purple and fine linen, and sumptuous fare. There are a very few
among them who, joining brilliant talents to solid learning, have risen
to deserved popularity, to titles, and to wealth. But even their
labours, it seems to me, are never rewarded in any proportion to the time
and the intellect spent on them, nor to the benefits which they bring to
mankind; while the great majority, unpaid and unknown, toil on, and have
to find in science her own reward. Better, perhaps, that it should be
so. Better for science that she should be free, in holy poverty, to go
where she will and say what she knows, than that she should be hired out
at so much a year to say things pleasing to the many, and to those who
guide the many. And so, I verily believe, the majority of scientific men
think. There are those among them who have obeyed very faithfully St.
Paul's precept, "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs
of this life." For they have discovered that they are engaged in a war--a
veritable war--against the rulers of darkness, against ignorance and its
twin children, fear and cruelty. Of that war they see neither the end
nor even the plan. But they are ready to go on; ready, with Socrates,
"to follow reason withersoever it leads;" and content, meanwhile, like
good soldiers in a campaign, if they can keep tolerably in line, and use
their weapons, and see a few yards ahead of them through the smoke and
the woods. They will come out somewhere at last; they know not where nor
when: but they will come out at last, into the daylight and the open