SCIENCE AND DEMOCRACY 259 



of the rich and high-born as well as of the poor. But it is to the com- 

 mon man that it means most, for it lifts him for the first time in history 

 above the level of economic slavery. Regardless of all the theories of 

 political science and philosophy, this economic liberation of the fourth 

 estate is working toward the ultimate democratization of society with a 

 force as irresistible as gravitation. It matters little what Bourbon 

 statesmen or scholastics may think about ultimate democracy ; it matters 

 tremendously that science has made it possible. 



The economic results of science are not its only bearings upon demo- 

 cratic tendencies. Equally important are the changes it has wrought 

 upon the attitude which men take toward the world of things. The 

 time was when it was regarded as the surest way to wisdom to retire from 

 contact with the concrete world of change. Plato held that the supreme 

 duty of man is to escape from the sensible world to the world of ideas. 

 The supreme destiny of the philosopher and his fullest satisfactions 

 are to be found in the life of contemplation, culminating in the vision 

 of the good. The world evident to the senses, the world of observation 

 was thus to be disregarded and neglected. It was instable, changing 

 and altogether below the life of reason. Small need, therefore, to exam- 

 ine it, for through it one would never find the truth, the beauty, or the 

 goodness so necessary for the happy soul. 



How large a share this doctrine of Plato's may have had in thwart- 

 ing the development of science in ancient Greece, it is difficult to see. 

 Mr. Schiller thinks it was very great. There were glimmerings of sci- 

 ence and the experimental study of nature in Plato's time. Man was 

 recognized as a part of nature; dissections had been practised by the 

 Pythagoreans; the experimental spirit had expressed itself in the atti- 

 tude of physicians toward their patients; anatomical research had been 

 extended to animals ; the relation of the parts of the body to their func- 

 tions were discovered; Democritus had glimpsed the essence of atomic 

 physics and had practiced experimental demonstration in his teaching; 

 the relativity of nature to human sensibilities was set forth by Protago- 

 rus and other Sophists, and attempts had been made by a score of 

 thinkers to analyze the physical world. But it all came to naught. 

 Through the long night between Democritus and Galileo these flicker- 

 ings of science slumbered. 



To the abortion of these scientific interests several causes probably 

 contributed. But if all the others had been removed, the chief phi- 

 losophy of the time would probably have prevented any wide application 

 of students to the things of nature, for Plato was the one overpowering 

 genius of his time. The dominance of the Greek philosophy down to 

 modern times is coincident with the sleep of science. 



To-day all this is changed; we seek the truth through analysis and 

 mastery of the world of sensible observation. The air, the soil, the 



