522 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



And, on the other hand, the grave doubts entertained by the distin- 

 guished men of science a few decades ago as to the permeability and 

 ready response of modern society to that influx of new ideas, have like- 

 wise not been realized. It is true that we still sometimes read of the- 

 ological tests being applied to teachers of biology, and hear, occasionally, 

 of an earnest search for a good methodist or a good presbyterian math- 

 ematician; but such cases may be left for settlement out of court 

 by means of the arbitration of our sense of humor. It seems not un- 

 likely, also, that there may persist, for a long time to come, a more or 

 less guerrilla 'warfare of science' with our friends the dogmatists and 

 humanists. Some consider this conflict to be, in the nature of things, 

 irrepressible. But I think we may hope, if we may not confidently 

 expect, that the collisions of the future will occur more manifestly 

 than they have in the past in accordance with the law of the conserva- 

 tion of energy ; so that the heat evolved may reappear as potential en- 

 ergy in the warmth of a kindly reasonableness on both sides, rather than 

 suffer degradation to the level of cosmic frigidity. 



Great questions, also, of education, of economic, industrial and 

 social conditions, and of legal and political relations are now demanding 

 all the light which science can bring to bear upon them. Though 

 tardily perceived, it is now admitted, generally, that science must not 

 only participate in the development of these questions, but that it alone 

 can point the way to the solutions of many of them. But there is no 

 halting ground here. Science must likewise enter and explore the 

 domain of manners and morals; and these, though already largely 

 modified unconsciously, must now be modified consciously to a still 

 greater extent by the advance of science. Only within quite recent 

 times have we come to realize an approximation to the real meaning 

 of the trite saying that the proper study of man is man. So long as the 

 most favored individuals of his race, in accordance with the hypothesis 

 of the first centuries, looked upon him as a fallen, if not a doomed, 

 resident of an abandoned reservation, there could be roused little en- 

 thusiasm with respect to his present condition ; all thought was concen- 

 trated on his future prospects. How incomparably different does he 

 appear to the anthropologist and the psychologist at the beginning 

 of the twentieth century ! In the light of evolution he is seen to be a 

 part of, and not apart from, the rest of the universe. The transcendent 

 interest of this later view of man lies in the fact that he can not only 

 investigate the other parts of the universe, but that he can, liy means 

 of the same methods, investigate himself. 



I would be the last to look upon science as furnishing a speedy or 

 a complete panacea for the sins and sorrows of mankind;, the'' destiny 

 of our race is entangled in a cosmic process whose working is thus far 

 only dimly outlined to us; but it is nevertheless clear that there are 



