PSYCHOLOGY 49 



a technology; and since this is the case, it is really to the interest even 

 of the most practical man that scientific activity should be conserved and 

 encouraged. 4 



A second consideration brings us by a different road to the same 

 conclusion. The close relationship that we have shown to hold between 

 science and technology is the relationship that holds in a scientific age, — 

 at a time when science has won to recognition, is cultivated internation- 

 ally, is widely popularized. In such an age, it is natural, as it is also 

 the best policy, for technology to draw upon science. Technological 

 activity, however, is a very complicated affair; and it may be doubted 

 whether technology, if left wholly to itself, would turn instinctively 

 even to the best scientific systems available; still more that it would 

 supply for itself, by arduous and unaccustomed work, the knowledge 

 that those systems fail to- furnish. The tendency would rather be (and 

 this is no dispraise to the technologist, who may never lose sight of his 

 practical end) to fall back upon past science, upon science that was 

 already more or less familiar, or to extend technological activity by 

 purely technological means. Indeed, this tendency may be observed at 

 the present day. The leader of a reform-movement in psychiatry, 

 which has found critics and adherents over the whole civilized world, 

 expressly bases his teaching upon psychology; but the psychology which 

 he has in part adopted, in part worked out anew, — and which he appears 

 to find entirely adequate to his technological needs, — is in essentials the 

 psychology of a past generation. The writer takes this illustration 

 from the field which is most familiar to him ; the reader will be able to 

 supply others from his own experience. The moral of such things is 

 surely plain: that the technologist, for the very sake of his technology, 

 needs the stimulus, the criticism and the assistance, of the man of 

 science. Practical work tends, always and everywhere, to become rou- 

 tine work ; routine tends toward conservatism, toward the defence of the 

 old and the avoidance of the new; and conservatism ensures social 

 stability. But if our ideal of society is a progressive equilibration, 

 rather than the mere inertia of routine, then the conservatism of prac- 

 tical work must be tempered by the radicalism of science. 



VI 



It is difficult, in writing upon a disputed question, not to give the 

 impression that one is trying to disparage one's opponents. Yet the 

 writer has no desire, despite the many hard things that technologists 

 have said of the science with which he is most nearly concerned, to 

 attempt any sort of disparagement of technology. Science and tech- 



4 ' ' The fact is ' ' — so Clifford puts the matter — ' ' that the most useful parts 

 of science have been investigated for the sake of truth, and not for their useful- 

 ness." 



VOL. LXXXVI. — 4. 



