Science and Citizenship
like the Secular orders, have their main interest in the application of doctrine to the needs of daily life.
XXV
Amongst existing groups of scientists which are the Seculars, which the Regulars? In the Physical Sciences it is easy to recognise actual or incipient Regular orders, in mathematicians, in students of heat, light, electricity, chemistry, &c. On the practical side there is the great body of engineers, with its numerous subdivisions, there are manufacturing chemists, the brewers, the opticians, &c.—are these the Secular orders in the physical group? Before answering that question we must discriminate. The differences of type are very great. It is, for instance, a far cry from the stoker, or even the driver, of a coal engine at the one end of the scale, to, at the other, the active partner in the firm of Messrs. White & Co., electricians and instrument makers; for the active partner in that firm is, or was. Lord Kelvin. It will be urged that Lord Kelvin as instrument maker and electrical engineer is merged and sunk in Lord Kelvin the professor, the investigator, the theorist. But the opposite interpretation would be equally true and equally false. The essential point is to see that it is the very coincidence and alternation of theory and practice, of science and art, of thought and action, that above all, differentiate and mark off the Seculars of science from those of other varieties of Spiritual Power. And applying this distinction, we readily
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