other wishes to make money; but I
am persuaded that the mechanician not unfrequently merges the hope of
profit in the love of his work. Members of each of these classes are
sometimes scornful towards those of the other. There is, for example,
something superb in the disdain with which Cuvier hands over the
discoveries of pure science to those who apply them: 'Your grand
practical achievements are only the easy application of truths not
sought with a practical intent--truths which their discoverers pursued
for their own sake, impelled solely by an ardour for knowledge. Those
who turned them into practice could not have discovered them, while
those who discovered them had neither the time nor the inclination to
pursue them to a practical result. Your rising workshops, your
peopled colonies, your vessels which furrow the seas; this abundance,
this luxury, this tumult,'--this commotion,' he would have added, were
he now alive, 'regarding the electric light'--'all come from
discoverers in Science, though all remain strange to them. The day
that a discovery enters the market they abandon it; it concerns them
no more.'

In writing thus, Cuvier probably did not sufficiently take into
account the reaction of the applications of science upon science
itself. The improvement of an old instrument or the invention of a
new one is often tantamount to an enlargement and refinement of the
senses of the scientific investigator. Beyond this, the amelioration
of the community is also an object worthy of the best efforts of the
human brain. Still, assuredly it is well and wise for a nation to
bear in mind that those practical applications which strike the public
eye, and excite public admiration, are the outgrowth of long
antecedent labours begun, continued, and ended, under the operation of
a purely intellectual stimulus. 'Few,' says Pasteur, 'seem to
comprehend the real origin of the marvels of industry and the wealth
of nations. I need no other proof of this than the frequent
employment in lectures, speeches, and official language of the
erroneous expression, "applied science." A statesman of the greatest
talent stated some time ago that in our day the reign of theoretic
science had rightly yielded place to that of applied science. Nothing,
I venture to say, could be more dangerous, even to practical life,
than the consequences which might flow from these words. They show
the imperious necessity of a reform in our higher educ