reased
and has widely diffused ease and comfort. The appliances of science have,
as it were, covered with a soft cushion the rough places of life, and that
not for the rich only, but also for the poor. So abundant and so prominent
are the material benefits of science, that in the eyes of many these seem
to be the only benefits which she brings. She is often spoken of as if she
were useful and nothing more; as if her work were only to administer to
the material wants of man.

Is this so? We may begin to doubt it when we reflect that the triumphs of
science which bring these material advantages are in their very nature
intellectual triumphs. The increasing benefits brought by science are the
results of man's increasing mastery over nature, and that mastery is
increasingly a mastery of mind; it is an increasing power to use the
forces of what we call inanimate nature in place of the force of his own
or other creatures' bodies; it is an increasing use of mind in place of
muscle.

Is it to be thought that that which has brought the mind so greatly into
play has had no effect on the mind itself? Is that part of the mind which
works out scientific truths a mere slavish machine, producing results it
knows not how, having no part in the good which in its workings it brings
forth?

What are the qualities, the features, of that scientific mind which has
wrought, and is working, such great changes in man's relation to nature?
In seeking an answer to this question we have not to inquire into the
attributes of genius. Though much of the progress of science seems to take
on the form of a series of great steps, each made by some great man, the
distinction in science between the great discoverer and the humble worker
is one of degree only, not of kind. As I was urging just now, the
greatness of many great names in science is often, in large part, the
greatness of occasion, not of absolute power. The qualities which guide
one man to a small truth silently taking its place among its fellows, as
these go to make up progress, are at bottom the same as those by which
another man is led to something of which the whole world rings.

The features of the fruitful scientific mind are, in the main, three.

In the first place, above all other things, his nature must be one which
vibrates in unison with that of which he is in search; the seeker after
truth must himself be truthful, truthful with the truthfulness of nature.
For the truthfulness