DEFINITION OF SOME MODERN SCIENCES. 101 



those imposed by authority human or divine ; and the observed constant 

 sequence of events which we codify as the 'Laws of Nature.' 



As our possession of unclassified facts increases, the need of sys- 

 tematizing them becomes greater until of necessity a new science is 

 framed to cover those categories not previously dealt with. 



We hope to-night to learn something of some of the relatively new 

 or modern sciences of which our program speaks. 



The rapid development of what were a few years ago merely 

 twigs of the tree of science into stout and fruitful branches is the most 

 remarkable phenomenon of our times. 



The majority of our grandfathers were content to declare that 

 'figures cannot lie,' a proverb which our fathers came to understand 

 needed much qualification before it could be accepted. To-night we 

 may hope to learn from a master in the science, something of the pre- 

 cautions by which the perversity of figures must be fenced about, in 

 order to confine them to their useful and appropriate field. 



It is not so long since eminent workers in economic questions 

 believed it the duty of government to leave the operation of commercial 

 forces to natural processes, the then unnamed 'Survival of the Fittest.' 

 The bitter cry of ill-paid labor, the unreasoning fury of the strike riot, 

 and the realization that in its essence civilization is the reversal of the 

 processes of nature 'red in tooth and claw,' these, aided by an ever- 

 growing consciousness of the brotherhood of man, were required to 

 develop into a science the study of the wonderfully complex forces of 

 economic civilization. Of this new science something will be told 

 to us to-night. 



For unnumbered centuries mankind has been slowly eliminating 

 from the ranks of the hypernatural, phase after phase of the aspects of 

 nature which he could come to understand. Slow indeed was the flow 

 of grist from the mills of the goddess of wisdom unceasingly grinding. 

 How should man account for that which was spiritual and impalpable, 

 yet obvious, when he knew not the alphabet of that which was physical 

 and material ? Step by step must the stairway be laid on imperishable 

 foundations before man might hope to ascend to the temple of knowl- 

 edge. Thread by thread must the wires be spun and stretched from the 

 verge of the known to the pillars of truth beyond the abyss of ignorance. 

 What wonder if, even now, the great mass of mankind will hardly 

 follow the investigator across the slender path of assured footing trem- 

 bling in the higher air? Are not magicians, fortune tellers, mediums, 

 all the phantasmagoria of magic and the occult still represented in 

 our literature and life, and by hereditary transmission more or less 

 imprinted on our instincts ? The new science of psychology, still in the 

 flush of youth, is pressing forward to lay these phantoms of the dusk 

 and sweep the fogs away. 



