CASTING BREAD UPON THE WATERS 177 



growth of the whole tree and its growing complexity and splen- 

 dor. The technical aspects of this are obvious, the purely human, 

 less so but hardly less important. That development is a part of 

 the history of mankind, not an incidental but an essential part; 

 it gives us opportunities of illustrating man's inherent greatness 

 and goodness, the gradual realization of his highest destiny, the 

 slow unfolding and revealing of the best in him. The purpose is to 

 bring scientists and humanists more closely together by explain- 

 ing to the latter the inward meaning of scientific discoveries (not 

 simply their outward usefulness), and to the former their deep 

 humanity; it is to educate the barbarians in our midst, not the 

 least of whom are those technicians and scientists who, however 

 expert in their own pursuits, fail to harmonize science with life 

 and art and to appreciate human values. 



Once, long ago, when Fan Ch'ih asked the meaning of vir- 

 tue, the Master (Confucius) replied "Love your fellow men." 

 Upon his asking the meaning of knowledge, the Master said: 

 "Know your fellow men." Our modern definition of knowl- 

 edge or of science — which is simply organized knowledge — is 

 much broader, but it is possible that in the process of broadening 

 it, the essential has been lost. For that essential : is it not the same 

 as it was in Confucius' days, two and a half millennia ago? How- 

 ever abstract our knowledge may be, and however hard we may 

 try to eliminate subjective elements, it is still in the last analysis 

 intensely human. Everything which we think or do is relative to 

 man. Science is nothing but the reflection of nature in a human 

 mirror. We may improve the mirror indefinitely; and though we 

 may rid it, or ourselves, of one cause of error after another, it is 

 and will always be, for good or for evil, irremediably human. 



Now it is one thing to purify our theories and our instruments, 

 to increase their abstraction, their generality, their invariance, 

 and to minimize to the limit of our ability the disturbing and er- 

 ratic elements, especially those introduced by our own person- 

 alities; it is quite another to appraise the human meaning and 

 value of those theories and instruments. In the first case, we con- 



