THE BUSINESS AFFAIRS OF SCIENCE 179 



physical strength. It has seldom been the general or the 

 soldiers who have won the victory so much as the men who 

 invented their rifles and cannons. Thus science possesses a 

 distinct political potentiality — it gives hegemony to the nations 

 which possess it and leaves nations, like individuals, which 

 do not possess it in a backwater of failure and poverty. 

 Efficiency in science is not merely an academical asset, but a 

 practical and national one. In the great international com- 

 petitions of to-day, whether in armaments, policies, industries, 

 or even sport, the possession of scientific knowledge and 

 especially of scientific modes of thought furnishes the deciding 

 factor. And this international struggle is a part of the evolu- 

 tionary scheme of nature. Nations no more than individuals 

 can be allowed to remain ignorant, sluggish, and unscientific. 

 Like individuals, they must train all their faculties, or else they 

 will suffer in the future as indolent nations have invariably 

 suffered in the past. Their rivals of to-day are apt to become 

 their enemies of to-morrow, and possibly their conquerors of 

 the day after. There are those who shudder at all ideas of con- 

 tention, and who would have the world be a pleasant garden 

 for non-competitive angels ; but the world must be taken as it 

 is; and, 'so far as we can ascertain, rivalry is the only instru- 

 ment which nature possesses to maintain racial efficiency. 



At two points science goes outside direct utilitarian effort. 

 The study of disease and of its prevention and cure has become 

 a sacred obligation for all the nations; and, secondly, science 

 trains the mind to better ways of thinking. Science is not 

 merely common sense. Her judgments are not merely like 

 those of the law courts, which consider only the evidence 

 placed before them, and which are prone to " rule out " this 

 or that fact as being irrelevant to the issue. She must collect 

 her own evidence ; with her scarcely any fact can be altogether 

 irrelevant to the issue; and often with her the trial is always 

 proceeding and the final judgment never given. She has learnt, 

 and she teaches, humility in decision. The happy jingoism of 

 dogma should not be hers. She has learnt, and she teaches, 

 the necessity for the infinite preparation of evidence and the 

 infinite distrust of personal opinion. Her methods, unlike those 

 of the dogmatist, have been justified by her wonderful successes; 

 and it will be good if these methods were more employed in 

 every line of human thought. 



