A Rational and Humane Science 



ignored all these other points that I have mentioned, 

 like changes of Sanitation, spontaneous decline 

 of Small-pox, the spread of other diseases, etc., 

 and simply limited themselves to one small aspect 

 of the problem. But now, after this interval of 

 time, when the neglected facts and aspects have 

 meanwhile forced themselves on our attention, how 

 remarkable is the change of attitude as evidenced 

 by the finding of the late Royal Commission ! 



From all this do not understand me to deride 

 Science for I have no intention of doing that ; 

 on the contrary, I think the debt we owe to modern 

 investigation quite incalculable ; but I only wish 

 to warn you how complex all these problems 

 are, how impossible that notion of settling even 

 one of them by a cut-and-dried intellectual 

 formula. 



But you will ask (for this is the second point 

 I mentioned some little time back) how people's 

 emotions and feelings come in to colour their 

 scientific conclusions ? And the answer is very 

 simply, namely by directing their choice as to 

 what aspects of the problem they will ignore and 

 what aspects they will envisage ; by determining 

 their point of view, in fact. To return to that 

 illustration of several portrait-painters painting 

 the same face ; just as each painter is led by his 

 feeling, his sympathies, his general temperament^ 

 to select certain points in the face and to pass over 

 others, so each group of scientific men in each 

 generation is led by its sympathies, its idiosyn- 



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