3 i6 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



comprehensively. Germany possesses three or four periodicals of the weekly or 

 fortnightly magazine type dealing with glass, but nothing in any way comparable 

 with the new Journal." It will be remembered that the British Science Guild did 

 much after the outbreak of war, not only to point out the urgent need of in- 

 vestigation to enable Britain to manufacture glass for scientific purposes, which 

 in pre-war days had been a monopoly of Germany and Austria, but to encourage 

 its manufacture in this country, and also to standardise microscopes, and so on. 



This and That (The Editor). 



The whole world, like a sinner that repenteth, is talking of reconstruction 

 after the war, but we hope that it will not imitate the personage who when he was 

 sick determined to be a saint. I am glad that British efforts in this direction have 

 been put in the charge of the Right Hon. Dr. Addison, M.P., a man of science as 

 well as a politician ; but to be effective the reform must be one of the spirit ; and I 

 suspect that it will be the penmen and not the politicians who will lead the revolu- 

 tion — as they did 150 years ago. What reforms of the spirit, then, should we 

 advocate in our own country ? First of all, we must disabuse ourselves of the 

 notion — ingrained in us by the efforts of politicians, lawyers, trade-unions, and 

 newspapers— that our rights are more important than our duties. For many years 

 past we have heard in this country almost nothing but one universal clamour for 

 rights — rights of labour, of women, of aborigines, of small nationalities, of animals, 

 of criminals. Democracy has become a babel of mean people, all shrieking 

 together for their rights and beating, 'biting, and scratching each other to get 

 them. The war was caused by the Germans in order to assert their own right 

 to a place in the sun and that of Demigod William to govern the world. Every 

 newspaper, especially every radical newspaper, is plastered all over with the word 

 rights — the right to refuse to fight for your country, the right to make friends with 

 your country's enemies, the right to be idle, the right to be fed and to have 

 your children educated by others — all finally merging into the universal right of 

 everyone for anything he pleases. But our duties? — oh yes, of course, we have 

 our duties — which we will perform when we have obtained all our rights ! . . . 

 The end of this cult is hell. That hell is paved with good intentions (including 

 reconstruction), but the damned who shriek there are roasted for ever in the 

 burning pit of their own imaginary rights, while the heaven which they see 

 through the smoke and cannot attain to is built upon the rock of duty. The war 

 is a part of that hell. . . . Surely a false cult, this one of rights. Not that of the 

 Great Teaching which was given to us nearly two thousand years ago in times of 

 much wealth and prosperity (and rights and strife, like our own) by the pale 

 Figure Whom we see and ignore in our churches. Rights ! — there are no such 

 things. Phantoms of self diseased, when we attempt to define them they melt 

 into air. We have no rights at all. We may claim only such privileges as nature 

 and our fellow-men allow us. But our duties are fixed for ever. 



The second great reform of the spirit must be the abandonment of the right 

 to be fools. This too has recently become a cult. The most popular character 

 on our stage is the silly comic-man ; and the hero and heroine themselves are 

 generally fools also — to judge by the ease with which the villain gulls them. Folly 

 has become one of the perfect gentleman's properties ; and the man who knows 

 anything is either the pantaloon uncle or the villain of the piece. Wisdom and 

 knowledge are derided even in the schools instituted to impart them, and our 

 lecturers on education are always belittling them in favour of what they call 

 character — usually another name for a carefully cultivated hypocrisy. But the 



