INTRODUCTORY 25 



compelled to classify them as interesting works of the 

 imagination, and not as solid contributions to human 

 knowledge. 



Although science claims the whole universe as its 

 field, it must not be supposed that it has reached, or ever 

 can reach, complete knowledge in every department. Far 

 from this, it confesses that its ignorance is more widely 

 extended than its knowledge. In this very confession of 

 ignorance, however, it finds a safeguard for future progress. 

 Science cannot give its consent to man's development 

 being some day again checked by the barriers which 

 dogma and myth are ever erecting round territory that 

 science has not yet effectually occupied. It cannot allow 

 theologian or metaphysician, those Portuguese of the 

 intellect, to establish a right to the foreshore of our 

 present ignorance, and so hinder the settlement in due 

 time of vast and yet unknown continents of thought. In 

 the like barriers erected in the past science finds some of 

 the greatest difficulties in the way of intellectual progress 

 and social advance at the present. It is the want of 

 impersonal judgment, of scientific method, and of accurate 

 insight into facts, a want largely due to a non-scientific 

 training, which renders clear thinking so rare, and random 

 and irresponsible judgments so common, in the mass of 

 our citizens to-day. Yet these citizens, owing to the 

 growth of democracy, have graver problems to settle than 

 probably any which have confronted their forefathers 

 since the days of the Revolution. 



S g. — TJie Second Claim of Science 



Hitherto the sole ground on which we have considered 

 the appeal of modern science to the citizen is the indirect 

 influence it has upon conduct owing to the more efficient 

 mental training which it provides. But we have further 

 to recognise that science can on occasion adduce facts 

 having far more direct bearing on social problems than 

 any theory of the state propounded by the philosophers 

 from the days of Plato to those of Hegel. I cannot bring 



