SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL GOOD WILL 409 



Confound their politics, 

 Frustrate their knavish tricks, 

 On thee our hopes we fix, 

 Oh save us all. 



Eeligion, poetry and art have been of untold value to tribes and 

 peoples; they will surely adjust themselves to the world as it now is 

 and should become. Science needs no reconstruction; it is by its nature 

 universal and gives a common interest and object to all nations. A 

 scientific advance or discovery made in one place is equally true and 

 equally important everywhere. When a state appropriates money for 

 research or when a university or scientific foundation is endowed by 

 private gift a contribution is made to the welfare and to the peace of 

 the whole world. Smithson, an- Englishman, might well establish the 

 institution that bears his name in the United States : it is for the " in- 

 crease and diffusion of knowledge among men." 



The methods of science and the spirit of science are adverse to the 

 jealousies, resentments and passions which lead to war. Dependence 

 on hypotheses and induction tends to careful weighing of facts and de- 

 lay before coming to conclusions. The quantitative method, the appli- 

 cation of mathematics and probability, enables us to measure our 

 knowledge and our ignorance. The genetic method discredits revolu- 

 tions and catastrophes; it gives us faith in the slow processes of evolu- 

 tion. The writer, a psychologist by profession, knows very well that 

 a scientific man may be correct and cautious in his researches, but 

 unwise and rash in other relations of life. None the less it is true that 

 the spread of scientific education and of scientific investigation is 

 slowly leading to objective points of view and moral conduct in daily 

 life. The scientific spirit is a pervasive and permanent force making 

 for the world's peace. 



Science not only gives us peace, but also the means to make worthy 

 use of peace. An industrial civilization in which each has as many 

 comforts and is spared as much misery as may be strikes our inherited 

 instincts as a tame and tiresome Walhalla. But science gives us an ob- 

 ject; it can even satisfy the inborn spirit for excitement and adventure. 

 The frontiers in the wilderness disappear as civilization encircles the 

 earth ; but the frontiers of science will always become larger and more 

 remote as they are further extended. War between nations may be- 

 come inconceivable; but however numerous may be the battles waged 

 and won by science, there will always be unconquered worlds beyond. 

 The hundred thousand physicians of our country, its fifty thousand 

 engineers, its ten thousand men of science engaged in research, form 

 an army more inspiring to the imagination than soldiers idling in bar- 

 racks or confined in the venereal wards of hospitals. The dealing with 

 germs of disease, with poisons, explosives and radiations, is not less 

 heroic than the risking of life on the battlefield. 



