reflect on the conditions by which progress is determined, may it not be argued that science and art stand on altogether different grounds? The causes which conduce to the progressive advancement of the former do not apply to the latter, and it might even, with some show of reason, be maintained that the growth of scientific knowledge constitutes a hindrance to artistic originality and productiveness, so that as science advances, art must necessarily decline. How far, let us ask, is this contrast true, and what are the lessons which, as students in both these produces of human thought, we may gather from it?
In the first place, it is obvious that in art (and under this general term I include not only what are ordinarily meant by the Fine Arts, but also that which may be regarded as the highest of them —Poetry) attainment depends much more on individual ability and genius than in science. A modern man of science may not be of greater mental power than many of its earlier pioneers, but he is immeasurably in advance of the latter in a sense in which we cannot say that a modern poet or sculptor is in advance of Homer or Pindar, of Phidias or Praxiteles. In those departments of human attainment in which observation and experiment are the instruments of knowledge, or again in those which, though they do not advance by the mere accretion or accumulation of facts and results, have in them a principle of development by which each successive age absorbs and uses up the thought of the past, it is plain that, with the same ability, the modern inquirer has immense advantages over the investigator of bygone times. Every real contribution which any past observer or thinker has made to science is, to him who begins now to labour in the same field, not only a ready-made part of knowledge, but a means of further discovery. Even a student of ordinary ability and diligence may in a few years make himself master of the best results of the lifelong labours of those who have contributed to the marvellous progress of physical science since the close of the 16th century. Nor does it need any great or exceptive powers of mind, any genius akin to that of the Keplers, Galileos, Newton s of past times, to be able to advance beyond their point of knowledge and to carry on the march of discovery into regions which it was not given to them to penetrate. For every new fact, every fresh application of a principle or law, is a distinct addition to the existing body of knowledge. And so, science progresses not merely by the intellectual activity of the highest minds, but by the patient toil of those who can only furnish materials for fresh induction, or work out applications of ascertained principles. In science it is not men of genius only who are capable of doing anything, laborious mediocrity has here also its most useful part to play, and even the veriest intellectual day-labourers, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, may do something to help on the common work.
Moreover, from the same cause it arises that the work of many of the greatest contributors to science speedily loses any other than an historical interest. However valuable what they did in their own day, their methods of investigation are no longer followed, their books are not read, the precise results of their researches are not attended to in ours. In many cases what were really valuable discoveries, measured by the existing state of knowledge, have been only stepping-stones towards greater discoveries, or have been superseded by wider generalisations. Even in the case of those great discoveries which remain permanent contributions to man's knowledge of nature, the form in which they were first propounded may have been greatly improved on by the labour of other and inferior minds, in whose works alone they are now read. Who now reads, not to speak of a host of earlier lesser lights, the writings of the great discoverer of the primary laws of the planetary motions? how many men in England know what Newton did in the precise form in which it was presented in the Principia? We can get what is of permanent value in such works in a simpler and clearer form, and with those modifications and extensions which subsequent research has suggested, in the scientific manuals of our own day; and so whilst these alone are read, the dust gathers on the works of the masters.
But if now we turn to that department of human activity which is embraced under the general designation of Art, it is obvious that the conditions of progress, if here there be any such thing, are altogether different. The achievements of the painters, sculptors, poets, of the past, are not handed on to their successors like those of the men of science, so as to make it certain that each succeeding age shall be in advance of all that went before. Here, what a man does depends comparatively little on what others have done before him, but mainly on the quality and temper of his own mind. It is true that, as time progresses, there may be a greater command of the accessories of art, and also that the works of the great masters, as they increase in numbers, furnish more examples to kindle the artistic enthusiasm and to guide the efforts of later generations. To get his ideas conveyed to us, the painter uses the language of lines and colours, the poet of melodious words, and the traditions of their craft may do something to perfect both in the use of the organs of expression they employ. But the chief element in the perfection of a work of art is
