Part 3

26. Hypnotism and an Experiment on the Influence of the Magnet 60

27. Luminous Owls and Other Luminous Animals and Plants 65

28. Reminiscences of Lord Kelvin 68

29. The So-called Jargon of Science 70

30. Rats and the Plague 73

31. Ancient Temples and Astronomy 78

32. Alchemists of To-day and Yesterday 84

33. A Story of Sham Diamonds and Pearls 88

34. The Nature of Pearls 89

35. A King Who was a Zoologist 93

36. The Transmission to Offspring of Acquired Qualities 97

37. Variation and Selection Among Living Things 103

38. The Movement, Growth, and Dwindling of Glaciers 108

39. Votes for Women 117

40. Tobacco and the History of Smoking 124

41. Cruelty, Pain, and Knowledge 131

* * * * *

FROM AN EASY CHAIR

1. Science and the Study of Nature

This volume consists of brief notes in plain language on a variety of scientific matters. I speak of new discoveries, real or so-called by mistake; of old well-established facts and explanations of strange occurrences which are more familiar to men of science than to people who have not had the time and opportunity to ascertain what is, and what is not proved and known about Nature and her ways. I do not address my reader from the professor’s chair, but from an easy chair. Just as in the club or my friend’s smoking-room, I might talk of these things, so do I propose to talk here. My hope is that what I have to say will interest those who are not experts in science, and yet have a desire for trustworthy information and opinion on the vast variety of topics which come up day by day for consideration and discussion, and can only be explained or rightly understood by the aid of that systematised knowledge which is called science.

* * * * *

Science and the scientific point of view have a very wide, indeed, an unlimited range. Though the making of discoveries of real importance and the full understanding of the steps by which they are made involves, as a rule, long study and special training, yet there is a vast deal of healthy excitement and pleasure connected with the progress of science, in which all can share by receiving, as it were, messages from the front. By contributing true records and observations of fact which serve, in however small a way, as ammunition and material of war for the use of the fighting line, we can all help and take part in the advance of science.

A great feature of what is called science is that it is true. The actual result achieved by science is the record of “that which is”--it can be examined, tested, and proved. But science does not merely collect accurate records of fact. In order to discover new things, new relations, and hidden causes she has to make use of guesses and flights of imagination. The “hypotheses” or guesses are not wild ones, but reasonable suppositions based on careful consideration of existing knowledge. They are never mistaken by trained workers in science for “facts,” nor put forward as such. On the contrary, they are tested and so confirmed or rejected by experiment or trial. Hence the necessity of accuracy in observation for the purposes of science; hence the proverbial “scientific accuracy.” It is of no use to form a guess based upon erroneous statements. It is mere waste of time to accept and build theories upon loose wonder-mongers’ gossip. And, further, the evidence which you obtain in order to confirm or dismiss your “guess” must be equally beyond suspicion as to its accuracy. It must be an observation of fact free from prejudice and illusion.

Your guess, if proved to be true, adds to the solid record of science new facts and new proofs of relationships, which again lead on the imagination of men of science to new guesses, and so to new confirmation or rejection, and to the growth of the vast record of accurate knowledge. To seek out in the endless whirling complexity of things which surround us in earth, sky, and sea, the truth, the knowledge of “that which is,” of the relation of these things to one another as cause and effect and their action and influence on ourselves--this is the aim of science. To substitute real understanding and the power of control of the surrounding world for the misleading and cruelly harmful conceptions existing in the minds of simple unskilled mankind--this is the daily achievement of science.

2. The Desire to Know the World of Nature

The practical value of science in securing the happiness of human communities is not, however, the reason which operates most strongly in exciting men and women to give themselves to the cultivation and improvement of this or that branch of it. A rich banker one day was looking round the Natural History Museum with me. It was his first visit. After a time he said, “It’s very fine! wonderful! But what’s it all for? Where does the money come in? That’s what I can’t understand. Why does the Government spend money on this if it don’t lead to making money?” I tried to convince him that there exists in us all a divine “curiosity,” a desire to know regardless of profit or loss, a thirst which we may cultivate and satisfy, in the full assurance that whilst its satisfaction is a delight in itself, we are all the while fulfilling the destiny of man, helping in the conquest of Nature. My friend had apparently lost that instinctive thirst which is the primary impulse to the pursuit of science, that capacity for pleasure which Robert Louis Stevenson truly notes in the words of the child of his “Garland of Verse”:

“The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings!”

The existence of that little child and of numberless “grown-ups” who have become or have never ceased to be, in this matter, even as he, is the reason why science has its helpers and workers of all ranks, and it is of them that I chiefly think in writing these notes.