THE HIGHER VALUES OF SCIENCE 307 



about the return to conditions in which progress and not 

 reaction is the watchword. 



In times of reaction, the existing forms of government 

 appear as the exclusive means of political salvation. Legal- 

 istic minds support tradition, and the general prejudice in 

 favor of the existing has full sway. What is is right. Those 

 who condemn it are in the wrong and should be dealt with. 

 Persecutions, of the kind tolerated at the present day, are 

 likely to follow. When to the uncritical deductions of the 

 honest citizen there is added the support of those who profit 

 financially by the situation as it exists, the outcome fre- 

 quently gives no cause for congratulation. The aftermath 

 of war has brought us to such a state in America, and there 

 is no assurance that insidious survivals of this condition will 

 not impede social progress for a generation to come. After 

 the political offenders are released and the mobs cease to 

 function, reaction may still dominate the nation. 



Specific examples will occur to anyone who follows the 

 history of current events. The thing to be criticised is, not 

 so much the capitalists or the socialists or the bolshevists or 

 union labor or the lawlessness of the mobs, as it is the frame 

 of mind which accepts that which has been as the standard of 

 what ought to be, and having done this, proceeds to condemn 

 all who do not hold to this exclusive manner of salvation. 

 Persecution naturally follows. As in the past, the decline of 

 this state of mind, which is at the root of persecution, can 

 come only when doubt is cast upon the underlying assump- 

 tion that the traditional forms of organization and activity 

 constitute the highest good. 



Skepticism, therefore, appears to have its value. Beliefs 

 possessing scant foundation cannot be made the basis for 

 dogmatic assertion and its implied intolerance, when chal- 

 lenged at their source. Skepticism has been the most 

 effective support of toleration in the past and it occupies a 

 similar position in the present. The skepticism of science 

 is not the trifling doubt of dilettantism. Science is thoughtful 



