Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The other danger to which I referred as demanding patience is of an
opposite kind. As we advance in our career, and the facts of our
investigations accumulate around us, there will come times of
depression when we seem lost in a labyrinth of detail out of which no
path appears to be discoverable. We have, perhaps, groped our way
through this maze, following now one clew, now another, that seemed to
promise some outlet to the light. But the darkness has only closed
around us the deeper, and we feel inclined to abandon the research as
one in which success is, for us at least, unattainable. When this
blankness of despair shall come upon you, take courage under it, by
remembering that a patient study of any department of Nature is never
labor thrown away. Every accurate observation you have made, every new
fact you have established, is a gain to science. You may not for a
time see the meaning of these observations, nor the connection of
these facts. But their meaning and connection are sure in the end to
be made out. You have gone through the labor necessary for the
ascertainment of truth, and if you patiently and watchfully bide your
time, the discovery of the truth itself may reward your endurance and
your toil.
It is by failures as well as by successes that the true ideal of the
man of science is reached. The task allotted to him in life is one of
the noblest that can be undertaken. It is his to penetrate into the
secrets of Nature, to push back the circumference of darkness that
surrounds us, to disclose ever more and more of the limitless beauty,
harmonious order, and imperious law that extend throughout the
universe. And while he thus enlarges our knowledge, he shows us also
how Nature may be made to minister in an ever-augmenting multiplicity
of ways to the service of humanity. It is to him and his conquests
that the material progress of our race is mainly due. If he were
content merely to look back over the realms which he has subdued, he
might well indulge in jubilant feelings, for his peaceful victories
have done more for the enlightenment and progress of mankind than were
ever achieved by the triumphs of war. But his eye is turned rather to
the future than to the past. In front of him rises the wall of
darkness that shrouds from him the still unknown. What he has
painfully accomplished seems to him but little in comparison with the
infinite possibilities that lie beyond. And so he presses onward, not
self-satisfied and exultant, but rather humbled and reverential, yet
full of hope and courage for the work of further conquest that lies
before him.--_Nature._
FOOTNOTE:
[40] An address to the students of Mason University College,
Birmingham, at the opening of the session, October 4, 1898.
SHALL WE TEACH OUR DAUGHTERS THE VALUE OF MONEY?
BY ALEXANDRA L. B. IDE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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