THE RELATION OF SCIENCE TO INDUSTRY 465 



after Galileo's time the use of levity became limited to the 

 ridiculous, that "the town that voted the earth was flat, flat 

 as my hat, flatter than that," had a perfect right to exist 

 before 1400 a.d., but not after that date, that we are learning 

 slowly through the accumulated experience and experiment- 

 ing of the centuries, especially since 1600 a.d., more about the 

 eternal laws that govern in the world in which we hve. And 

 for my own part I do not beHeve for a moment that these 

 eternal laws are Hmited to the physical world either. Less 

 than sixty years ago, to take one single iUustration, there 

 existed a large poHtical party in the United States caUed the 

 Greenback Party which Jumped at conclusions and which 

 conducted campaigns to induce our government to go over 

 to a fiat money basis. I do not suppose such a party could 

 exist today unless it be in states that passed anti-evolution 

 laws, for there are some laws that have become established, 

 even in the field of finance. 



This brings me to a brief discussion of the current opposi- 

 tion to the advance of science, an opposition participated 

 in even by some intelligent people, on the ground that 

 mankind cannot be trusted with too much knowledge, by 

 others on the ground that beauty and art and high emotion 

 are incompatible with science. Now, fear of knowledge is 

 as old as the Garden of Eden and as recent as Dr. Faust, and 

 there is no new answer to be made to it. The old answer is 

 merely to point to what the increase in knowledge has done 

 to the lot of mankind in the past, and I think that answer 

 is sufficient, for it has certainly enfranchised the slave and 

 given every man, even the poorest, such opportunities as 

 not even the prince of old enjoyed. Who would go back to 

 the Stone Age because Stone-age man had no explosives? 

 Of course every new capacity for beauty and joy and for 

 accomplishment brings with it the possibility of misuse and 

 hence a new capacity for sorrow. 



But it is our knowledge alone that makes us men instead of 

 lizards, and thank God, we cannot go back whether we would 

 or no. Our supreme, our Godlike task, is to create greater 

 beauty and fuller joy with every increased power rather than 

 to turn our weeping eyes toward the past and fling ourselves 

 madly, unreasoningly athwart the path of progress. Beauty 



