like for the most perfect production and highest enjoyment
of art in all its forms, the needful preparation is still--Science. And
for purposes of discipline--intellectual, moral, religious--the most
efficient study is, once more--Science. The question which at first
seemed so perplexed, has become, in the course of our inquiry,
comparatively simple. We have not to estimate the degrees of importance
of different orders of human activity, and different studies as
severally fitting us for them; since we find that the study of Science,
in its most comprehensive meaning, is the best preparation for all these
orders of activity. We have not to decide between the claims of
knowledge of great though conventional value, and knowledge of less
though intrinsic value; seeing that the knowledge which proves to be of
most value in all other respects, is intrinsically most valuable: its
worth is not dependent upon opinion, but is as fixed as is the relation
of man to the surrounding world. Necessary and eternal as are its
truths, all Science concerns all mankind for all time. Equally at
present and in the remotest future, must it be of incalculable
importance for the regulation of their conduct, that men should
understand the science of life, physical, mental, and social; and that
they should understand all other science as a key to the science of
life.

And yet this study, immensely transcending all other in importance, is
that which, in an age of boasted education, receives the least
attention. While what we call civilisation could never have arisen had
it not been for science, science forms scarcely an appreciable element
in our so-called civilised training. Though to the progress of science
we owe it, that millions find support where once there was food only for
thousands; yet of these millions but a few thousands pay any respect to
that which has made their existence possible. Though increasing
knowledge of the properties and relations of things has not only enabled
wandering tribes to grow into populous nations, but has given to the
countless members of these populous nations, comforts and pleasures
which their few naked ancestors never even conceived, or could have
believed, yet is this kind of knowledge only now receiving a grudging
recognition in our highest educational institutions. To the slowly
growing acquaintance with the uniform co-existences and sequences of
phenomena--to the establishment of invariable laws, we owe o