UTILITARIAN SCIENCE. 81 



sorts. In the experience of a single human life there is little to correct 

 even the crudest of theological conceptions. From the supposed greater 

 importance of religious opinions in determining the fate of men and 

 nations, theological ideas have dominated all others throughout the 

 ages; and in the nature of things, the great religious bodies have formed 

 the stronghold of conservatism against which the separated bands of 

 science have hurled themselves, seemingly, in vain. 



But the real essence of conservatism lies not in theology. The 

 whole conflict, as I have already said, is a struggle in the mind of man. 

 From some phase of the warfare of science no individual is exempt. 

 It exists in human psychology before it is wrought in human history. 

 There is no better antidote to bigotry than the study of the growth of 

 knowledge. There is no chapter in history more encouraging than that 

 which treats of the growth of open mindedness. The study of this his- 

 tory leads religious men to avoid intolerance in the present, through a 

 knowledge of the evils intolerance has wrought in the past. Men of 

 science are spurred to more earnest work by the record that through 

 the ages objective truth has been the final test of all theories and con- 

 ceptions. All men will work more sanely and more effectively as they 

 realize that no good to religion or science comes from ' wishing to please 

 God with a lie.' 



It is the mission of science to disclose — so far as it goes — the real 

 nature of the universe. Its function is to eliminate, wherever it be 

 found, the human equation. By methods of precision of thought and 

 instruments of precision of observation and experiment, science seeks 

 to make our knowledge of the small, the distant, the invisible, the 

 mysterious as accurate, as practical, as our knowledge of common 

 things. Moreover, it seeks to make our knowledge of common things 

 accurate and precise, that this accuracy and precision may be translated 

 into action. For the ultimate end of science as well as its initial im- 

 pulse is the regulation of human conduct. Seeing true means think- 

 ing right. Bight thinking means right action. Greater precision in 

 action makes higher civilization possible. Lack of precision in action 

 is the great cause of human misery; for misery is the inevitable result 

 of wrong conduct. ' Still men and nations reap as they have strewn/ 



A classic thought in the history of applied science is expressed in 

 these words of Huxley : ' There can be no alleviation of the sufferings 

 of man except in absolute veracity of thought and action, and a reso- 

 lute facing of the world as it is.' ' The world as it is,' is the province 

 of science. ' The God of the things as they are, is the God of the 

 highest heaven.' And as to the sane man, the world as it is is glori- 

 ous, beautiful, harmonious and divine, so will science, our tested and 

 ordered knowledge of it, be the inspiration of art, poetry and religion. 



Pure science and utilitarian science merge into each other at every 

 point. They are one and the same thing. Every new truth can be 



VOL. lxvi. — 6. 



