gination, as have the time
cycles revealed by the paths of comets and meteors. The
universe seems indeed, as revealed by science, to present that
quality of aesthetic satisfaction which is always derived from
unity in multiplicity. The stars are as innumerable as they
are ordered. And it was Lucretius, the poet of naturalism,
who was wakened to wonder and admiration at the ceaseless
productivity, inventiveness, and fertility of Nature. We find
in the revelations of science again the same examples of delicacy
and fineness of structure that we admire so much in the
fine arts. The brain of an ant, as Darwin said, is perhaps the
most marvelous speck of matter in the universe. Again "the
physicists tell us that the behaviour of hydrogen gas makes it
necessary to suppose that an atom of it must have a constitution
as complex as a constellation, with about eight hundred
separate corpuscles."[2]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 176.]

THE DANGER OF "PURE SCIENCE." The fascinations of
disinterested inquiry are so great that they may lead to a kind of
scientific intemperance. The abstracted scientific interest
may become so absorbed in the working-out of small details
that it becomes over-specialized, narrow, and pedantic. The
pure theorist has always been regarded with suspicion by the
practical man. His concern over details of flora or fauna,
over the precise minutiae of ancient hieroglyphics, seems
absurdly trivial in comparison with the central passions and
central purposes of mankind. There are workers in every
department of knowledge who become wrapt up in their
specialties, forgetting the forest for the trees. There are men
so absorbed in probing the crevices of their own little niche of
knowledge that they forget the bearings of their researches.
Especially in time of stress, of war or social unrest, men have
felt a certain callousness about the interests of the abstrusely
remote scholar. We shall have occasion to note presently
that it is in this coldness and emancipation from the pressing
demands of the moment that science has produced its most
pronounced eventual benefits for mankind. But an uncontrolled
passion for facts and relations may degenerate into a
mere play and luxury that may have its fascination for the
expert himself, but affords neither sweetness nor light to any
one else. One has but to go over the lists of doctors' dissertations
published by German universities during the late nineteenth
century to find