BIOLOGY AND HUMAN PROBLEMS 



which the psychologist knows almost as much as the 

 physicist knows about the atom; and all through the appli- 

 cation of scientific methodology. In other words, these men 

 who have become distinguished by using scientific methods 

 in a given field, turn to a department in which they have 

 no accurate knowledge and maintain seriously that here 

 the primitive folklore of the race, unsupported by the type 

 of evidence they would demand in their own researches, is 

 preferable to the inductive conclusions reached by scholars 

 working objectively on the subjects involved. In doing so 

 they merely show that a man may do excellent work in 

 science without being a scientist at heart. 



These statements — or any others I may make in an insist- 

 ence that the scientific attitude of mind is the only position 

 worthy of the species, if it is to be known as Homo sapiens — 

 will convince no adult who has reached different conclu- 

 sions previously. If a man of mature mind has become 

 assured that science is materialistic and interferes with the 

 spiritual life, it is useless to try to change his views. But 

 this fact by no means releases the scientist from the duty 

 of propagating his beliefs. The impact of his arguments 

 upon younger minds, still incompletely hypnotized by the 

 imagery of metaphysics, will eventually yield results. 

 These more elastic individuals will come to realize that 

 man is to be distinguished from the other animals on the 

 footstool chiefly by his greater intelligence, and that only 

 by the exercise of this intelligence can he have a higher life. 

 They will see that the mystical pother over man's apartness 

 from the rest of creation is merely a formal expression of 

 the hopes and desires arising from his superbly egocentric 

 imagination. And as such disciples grow in numbers, 

 so will the momentum of intellectual progress increase 

 in strength. 



One has the feeling that science is advancing and bigotry 

 retreating at a more rapid pace to-day than was the case a 



[5] 



