These
last are called pioneers of science, and to them alone is the title
"scientific" commonly accorded; but pioneers, important to an army as
they are, are still not the army itself, which can get on better without
the pioneers than the pioneers without the army. Surely the class which
knows thoroughly well what it knows, and which adjudicates upon the value
of the discoveries made by the pioneers--surely this class has as good a
right or better to be called scientific than the pioneers themselves.
These two classes above described blend into one another with every shade
of gradation. Some are admirably proficient in the well-known
sciences--that is to say, they have good health, good looks, good temper,
common sense, and energy, and they hold all these good things in such
perfection as to be altogether without introspection--to be not under the
law, but so entirely under grace that every one who sees them likes them.
But such may, and perhaps more commonly will, have very little
inclination to extend the boundaries of human knowledge; their aim is in
another direction altogether. Of the pioneers, on the other hand, some
are agreeable people, well versed in the older sciences, though still
more eminent as pioneers, while others, whose services in this last
capacity have been of inestimable value, are noticeably ignorant of the
sciences which have already become current with the larger part of
mankind--in other words, they are ugly, rude, and disagreeable people,
very progressive, it may be, but very aggressive to boot.
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