20 



being blunted by reason of being wholly absorbed in the one 

 sole exercise of money-getting. The medieval alchemist, m 

 his vain search for the secret of the transmutation of metals 

 was no more a visionary then (I would not say the same 

 to-day) than your modern "hustler," whose one ami m 

 life is to end it, and that by smothering himself in a pile of 

 dollars. To him and to those like him nothing is " immune 

 from the menace of destruction under the Juggernaut wheels 

 of a Mammonish commerce." 



Before closing, I would like to emphasize a special feature 

 in our methods of scientific research relative to the study of 

 the human subject. It is a mistake to suppose that the most 

 fruitful results of the recondite investigation of man, considered 

 purely on his physical side, will ever fully account for the whole 

 man. Man is allied to nature we all know, but even with 

 this admission a vast sphere has yet to be accounted for. 

 The mysteries of vital phenomena (which 1 hold form a 

 legitimate field of scientific inquiry of the most careful 

 and unbiassed character) must be approached by and 

 through the channel of microscopic research. But, 

 supposing that the secret of life is eventually discovered, 

 man in his social and moral aspects remains a complex being, 

 beyond and apart from physical nature. The older School of 

 Economists failed to see this ; but I have good reason to believe 

 that modern scientists are not blind to the fact. Biology and 

 Philosophy, Physiology and Ethics, may at first sight present 

 the appearance of ill-assorted couples, most absurd unions ; but 

 the apparent absurdity lies in the novelty, not the fact. Human 

 nature is a factor in the world's history that cannot be too often 

 insisted upon, man being not a mere mathematical conundrum, 

 fit only for the sport of those theorists, who, possessed 

 with small knowledge, proceed upon the plan of guessing half 

 and then multiplying by two. The scientific spirit to-day 

 (extravagant doubtless in some quarters), is on the whole 

 sound and sane. The spirit of empiricism, too, is abroad, but 

 never was it more hated ; and the same may be said of scientific 

 dogmatism. Emmanuel Kant's dictum remains true— " On 

 eaPth there is nothing great but man, in man there is nothing 



