66 THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE 



insidious and deadly secret distrust and hostility to 

 science, on the part of those left still with power and 

 influence in the councils of the State. This second 

 phase, meaner in motive than the first, derives its 

 strength from a negative source, far stronger than 

 any downright antagonism, from sheer mental inertia 

 and the comforting belief of the masses that the 

 world is big enough and lazy enough to swallow up 

 science without really departing, by a hair's-breadth, 

 from any of its former habits of thought, or relin- 

 quishing any of its old, inefficient, empirical methods. 

 As one of the few clear decisions yet reached by the 

 war, this second and infinitely more dangerous phase 

 of hostility to science has, I believe, received its 

 death-blow. Whether its end be lingering or sudden 

 it is too soon to say. 



The curricula of ancient universities accumulate 

 rather than evolve. The new cult of science is 

 sandwiched with a culture that came to maturity 

 thousands of years ago. Nothing is ever abolished 

 from the curriculum. If there were real freedom of 

 choice, the survival of the fittest would operate. But 

 the whole system of bursaries and regulations for 

 degrees is to bolster up and perpetuate a museum 

 of ancient learning, and the system of finance to 

 divert to its support the resources needed for living 

 subjects. What Sir Arthur Evans has characterised 

 as the dull incuria of the parents to intellectual 

 pursuits allows it. The result is that the ancient 

 universities become, not by any means the quiet 

 sanctuaries of ancient learning, which would be 

 relatively harmless, but the active agents in per- 

 petuating in power a type of man who is hopelessly 

 out of tune with his environment, however rational 

 he may have been in the Middle Ages. Then Latin 

 was much what Esperanto is trying to become 

 to-day, a universal written language, and as necessary 





