RESEARCH IN DEVELOPMENT OF HEALTH 363 



certain canons of his art, as certainly as the true and lasting work of the 

 scientist must accurately accord with natural laws. 



The scientist is as little able to prove the fundamental truth or existence 

 of the groundwork upon which modern physical, chemical and physiolog- 

 ical theories are built, as the artist is to prove the ethics, or perfect truth, or 

 perfect beauty, of those conventions upon which poetry, painting or that 

 great group of studies termed the "humanities" find their basis. But 

 the artist or philosopher knows that, using these conventions as the best 

 at present discovered, he can produce works of which the beauty and con- 

 sistency appeal to all educated human minds capable of appreciation. 

 Similarly, the conventions of natural science, properly understood, ap- 

 peal to the imagination of the scientist, call forth new ideas to his mind, 

 and suggest fresh experiments to test those ideas ; or, a chance empirical 

 observation of an experimental nature, which without theory and scien- 

 tific imagination would remain isolated and sterile, placed in relation- 

 ship to the rest of the scheme of science, awakens thought, and may lead 

 to a fresh departure and a long train of important discoveries. 



It was this correlation of the imagination with experimentation and 

 the tracing out of relationship from point to point so as to develop the 

 evolution of phenomena that characterized the science of medicine when 

 new-born about seventy years ago and differentiated it from the older 

 nosological medicine in which imagination and experimentation, while 

 both existing, seemed to possess independent existences and pay little re- 

 gard the one to the other. 



It seems well-nigh forgotten nowadays by the majority of people 

 that science and religion originally began together from a common thirst 

 for knowledge, and usually in the same type of mind endowed with a 

 divine curiosity to know more of the origin and nature of things. 



Every great religion worthy of the name contains some account of 

 the natural history and creation of the world, in addition to its meta- 

 physical aspects, and reflects the degree of knowledge of natural science 

 possessed by the nation in which it arose at the time of its birth. 



The fundamental error throughout the ages of human conceptions, 

 both in science and religion, was that of a non-progressive world to 

 which a stereotyped religion, or science, could be adapted for all time. 

 Perfection was imagined where perfection, we are now happy to realize, 

 was impossible, and, believing in this imaginary perfection and that all 

 things new deviating from it were damnable men were prepared to burn 

 one another at the stake rather than allow error to creep into the world 

 in either science or religion. Thus there have been martyrs for the scien- 

 tific conscience just as for religious belief, and at this distance in time 

 we can perhaps better understand both inquisitor and martyr and real- 

 ize that both were fighting for great ideals. 



Evolution has taught us that as knowledge broadens we must be pre- 



