eal of modern biology. And as
the captains of industry have, at last, begun to be aware that the
condition of success in that warfare, under the forms of peace, which
is known as industrial competition lies in the discipline of the
troops and the use of arms of precision, just as much as it does in
the warfare which is called war, their demand for that discipline,
which is technical education, is reacting upon science in a manner
which will, assuredly, stimulate its future growth to an incalculable
extent. It has become obvious that the interests of science and of
industry are identical, that science cannot make a step forward
without, sooner or later, opening up new channels for industry, and,
on the other hand, that every advance of industry facilitates those
experimental investigations, upon which the growth of science depends.
We may hope that, at last, the weary misunderstanding between the
practical men who professed to despise science, and the high and dry
philosophers who professed to despise practical results, is at an end.

Nevertheless, that which is true of the infancy of physical science in
the Greek world, that which is true of its adolescence in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, remains true of its riper age in
these latter days of the nineteenth century. The great steps in its
progress have been made, are made, and will be made, by men who seek
knowledge simply because they crave for it. They have their
weaknesses, their follies, their vanities, and their rivalries, like
the rest of the world; but whatever by-ends may mar their dignity and
impede their usefulness, this chief end redeems them.[B] Nothing great
in science has ever been done by men, whatever their powers, in whom
the divine afflatus of the truth-seeker was wanting. Men of moderate
capacity have done great things because it animated them; and men of
great natural gifts have failed, absolutely or relatively, because
they lacked this one thing needful.

[Sidenote: True aim and method of research.]

To anyone who knows the business of investigation practically, Bacon's
notion of establishing a company of investigators to work for
'fruits,' as if the pursuit of knowledge were a kind of mining
operation and only required well-directed picks and shovels, seems
very strange.[C] In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every
other sphere of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of
counsellors, but it is only in one or two