118 THE NEW ERA 



that the world has entered upon " the age of science " 

 has sometimes been made without a clear and precise 

 meaning. Certainly it has often been assailed, even 

 ridiculed, by people who did not recognize its vital 

 truth. It is at once the plainest and truest thing we 

 could say about our age. Comte's law of the three 

 stages was not an original discovery, but it is so true 

 that it is almost a platitude. The first phase of the 

 mind of man was theological, the second phase was 

 metaphysical, the third — on which we have just 

 entered — is positive or scientific. 



It is emphatically the promise of the application of 

 science to the whole of life which is the finest feature 

 of our age ; it is the delay in fulfilling that promise 

 which leaves our civilization so crude and elementary. 

 We apply science to the metals and chemicals of the 

 soldier, even to the brains of his generals ; but when 

 it comes to studying the human conditions out of 

 which wars arise, we leave the job to a group of 

 utterly unscientific statesmen and diplomatists, who 

 will consider a hundred things except what ought 

 chiefly to be considered. We apply science to industry, 

 and it invents machines for us which are as far beyond 

 any mechanism known in Babylon or Athens as the 

 Athenian loom was beyond the flint scraper of pre- 

 historic man ; but we will not apply science to the 

 very greatest and gravest of all industrial problems — 

 whether it is really necessary to keep the greater part 

 of the race in a state of poverty and imperfect mental 

 development and let a few monopolize its art and 

 culture. We apply science with brilliant success to 

 discover the evolution of mind or the evolution of 

 morals ; but we do not consult it at all when we 

 confront the very imperfect moral condition of the 



