2 6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



lightning, the slime, the refuse of the world, is yielding up the truth 

 by which we live. Your earlier philosopher would escape from the 

 sensuous world ; the modern savant eagerly penetrates its depths, making 

 his implements of research as he goes. Compare Thomas Aquinas in 

 an age which rotted with physical uncleanness withdrawing from the 

 world, exalting divine reason above natural reason and refusing the 

 evidence of his natural reason in order to conserve a difficult faith, with 

 Metchnikoff studying the embryology of sponges, the structure and 

 digestion of polyps, and the blood of water fleas to discover the phago- 

 cytes, which mean so much for the preservation of human health and 

 the extension of earthly life. To our scientific minds the slimiest, vilest 

 bit of earth may have the truth we need and will hold it forever locked 

 from him who merely sits and thinks. Because this is so, the whole 

 world of matter has assumed a higher value in our thinking than in any 

 age before. To this exaltation of material things all the advances in 

 evolutionary biology and the studies in physiology and experimental 

 psychology contribute. We see now as not before how much is man of 

 a piece with nature, in his ancestry, in his composition and in his future. 

 And we see that the world of matter in which he lives has much in com- 

 mon with himself. Not to escape this world, but to understand it; not 

 to despise it, but to control it, is our modern aim. 



In this altered view of the world and mau's relation to it, the man 

 who works with his hands has assumed a new status. Both he and his 

 work are objects of general concern, and manual labor that is skilled 

 takes on dignity and honor with the work of the laboratory. No man 

 who has worked with his hands in any of our modern laboratories will 

 long despise his neighbor whose handiwork is in a shop, or in the cab 

 of a locomotive, grimy as that work may be. This world of ours is fast 

 ceasing to be a world of privilege and war, as it long has been, and is be- 

 coming through and through a world of work. Faster than he likes the 

 king is being replaced by the scholar, and the soldier is giving way to the 

 engineer. The province of the priest is suffering encroachment by 

 the physician, and the lawyer is having to recognize the contentions of the 

 social worker. In a score of fields the privilege of dogmatism is being 

 crushed by established facts, and the privilege of contempt must more 

 and more disappear as we see how near akin are all the men who work. 

 In the process of our civilization's making, we see that all who labor 

 must share in the glory of the final achievement. In this new view both 

 the worker and his work are lifted to a more elevated place in our view 

 of things. We realize the human value of the work and we see that 

 through his work the worker himself is made. 



A third and more subtle relation between science and democracy con- 

 sists in this, that they are both unwilling to close the books. Neither 

 can accept a closed scheme of thought. Science can not abide a finished 



