136 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



true ; but the argument carried to its conclusion leads further, 

 and precisely to our point. Men are not wolves and are not 

 bees ; they are men. By this time we have acquired intelligence 

 far superior to that of wolves and of bees — why then do we not 

 use this intelligence for our own government ? Cannot men 

 who made the great ships that move upon the waters and in 

 the air, the great engines that labour on land, and the great 

 instruments that enable the mind to measure the heavens — 

 can we not use these powers to prevent such disasters as we 

 are now suffering from, by constructing an equally efficient 

 engine of government ? Truly we can. But only by one 

 method. By using the calculation, judgment, forethought and 

 invention which men of science and inventors have employed 

 in the cases mentioned. To do this, however, we must first 

 recognise that we are men, and neither angels nor animals. 

 Let us cast behind us our sects, our party politics, our dogmas, 

 and our lies, and fling our broken M^Jon the rubbish heap. 

 Both England and Germany must do this, for both have 

 worshipped false gods. If they do not do it, they shall again 

 receive, as they are receiving to-day, the punishment which 

 Jehovah gave to the Israelites who disobeyed His prophets — 

 and Him. 



One of our highest thinkers has suggested that civilisation 

 waxes and wanes every fifteen hundred years or so — rises to 

 the highest point of prosperity, and then sinks down again to 

 the lowest depth of the opposite. And we have had immense 

 examples before us — Greece and Rome, China, India, and cer- 

 tain nations of modern Europe. There is behind this some 

 great and undiscovered law of nature. Let us beware of it. 

 Let science try to discover it. Otherwise, it may be that this 

 war is only a beginning, and that the noble structure which 

 our fathers made will become in the time of our sons a 

 jumble of ruined columns overgrown with thistles, among 

 which the wolves howl by moonlight and there lives no great 

 thing. 



Let the point be clearly understood. There is moral crime 

 and there is intellectual crime ; and the intellectual crime is 

 perhaps the worst of all. Those who remain ignorant when 

 they should learn, thoughtless when they should think, and 

 sunk in superstitions when they should reason, are defaulters 

 before God ; and this war was in the first place due to the 



