ABSTRACT
Just as in the very bosom of religion there are a great many men handling sacred matters without the least idea of their lofty meaning, and only looking at them in the light of vulgar manipulation, so in the field of science there are labourers—very worthy people in the main—often utterly lacking in the sentiment of their work and its value in the furtherance of the ideal. By studying the origin of each science one will find that the first steps were nearly always taken with no very distinct consciousness, and that among others, philological studies owe a large debt of gratitude to very mediocre intellects, which at the outset laid down their material conditions. The sole legitimate means of making one’s self the apologist of science is to look upon it as the essential element to human perfection.
