HUMAN PROSPECTS — BLACKWELDER 275 



mathematical studies, philosophers rather than scientists. Even to- 

 day the study of human conduct is but slowly emerging from its 

 age-long status as an appendage of religion. Would it not bring 

 fruitful results to study ethics in the same scientific spirit that 

 already pervades such a field of research as physiology? Without a 

 firmly based and widely accepted science of ethics, the other natural 

 sciences alone may lead us eventually to ruin for want of adequate 

 control. Under the direction of the engineer, dynamite is an effective 

 aid in construction and promotes industrial progress; but in the 

 hands of the criminal it means murder and destruction. The differ- 

 ence is only one of ethics. 



To have science flourish, there must be complete freedom of in- 

 quiry and discussion. The beneficial influence of such freedom is 

 indicated by the extraordinary development of philosophy and the 

 sciences among the Greeks in the fourth to the sixth centuries B. C, 

 in the Germany of the nineteenth century, and in modern America. 

 Scholars properly insist on this necessity and guard their hard- 

 earned right to intellectual liberty; nor is this freedom of research 

 so firmly held but that it takes a little defending all the while from 

 the bigots who would close to discussion certain trends of thought 

 of which they chance to disapprove. 



But if the scientist is to deserve and therefore keep his freedom, 

 even in a democracy, he should be equally scrupulous about his own 

 responsibility to the public. He has no right to claim on the one 

 hand immunity from restraint and on the other license to be unre- 

 liable. It is the few irresponsible members of our profession who 

 endanger our freedom of expression, for it is their words that tend 

 to discredit the very science to which they are nominally attached 

 and thus bring all science into disrepute. 



One of the best indicators of the scientific maturity of a nation 

 is the standing accorded scientists in their own communities. In 

 Greece science and philosophy flourished not only because they were 

 free, but because they brought honor and even wealth to those who 

 distinguished themselves in scholarship. In Germany 40 years ago 

 the great scientist, like Helmlioltz, was appointed a Geheimrat and 

 on the whole stood higher in the social scale than the banker or the 

 industrial magnate. In our own country we are lately beginning 

 to appreciate our thinkers, but their value to the world is not widely 

 comprehended, nor are we very discriminating in recognizing them. 

 We are apt to rate too highly the man who makes a spectacular but 

 very definite and easily apprehended discovery, as compared with 

 another who slowly develops an idea or principle which in time 

 unlocks for us another room of progress. 



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