These are the people who know best those things which are best worth
knowing--that is to say, they are the most truly scientific.
Unfortunately, the apparatus necessary for this kind of science is so
costly as to be within the reach of few, involving, as it does, an
experience in the use of it for some preceding generations. Even those
who are born with the means within their reach must take no less pains,
and exercise no less self-control, before they can attain the perfect
unconscious use of them, than would go to the making of a James Watt or a
Stephenson; it is vain, therefore, to hope that this best kind of science
can ever be put within the reach of the many; nevertheless it may be
safely said that all the other and more generally recognised kinds of
science are valueless except in so far as they minister to this the
highest kind. They have no _raison d'etre_ unless they tend to do away
with the necessity for work, and to diffuse good health, and that good
sense which is above self-consciousness. They are to be encouraged
because they have rendered the most fortunate kind of modern European
possible, and because they tend to make possible a still more fortunate
kind than any now existing. But the man who devotes himself to science
cannot--with the rarest, if any, exceptions--belong to this most
fortunate class himself.
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