STEREOTYPED HUMANISM 71 



science. Their present attention has been directed 

 to its existence by the fear of annihilation, and their 

 interest is mainly in its profanation to the purpose of 

 destruction. 



They inhabit a world a thousand times more 

 wealthy than their predecessors did, but they do not 

 understand why. They can wage war on a thousand 

 times more lavish and destructive a scale, but it is 

 not to them that the world can look for recuperation. 

 Science, which has enlarged the heritage of man 

 beyond reckoning, and which promises to enlarge it 

 beyond the dreams of phantasy, is a sealed book to 

 the majority, more than any other branch of human 

 activity and endeavour at the present time. The 

 opponents of science are already arguing for the 

 retention of everything that is time-honoured and 

 classical in our curricula alongside with what is 

 essentially modern and of present-day significance. 

 It is not so much that the subjects they represent 

 have no present-day application as that, as they 

 represent them, in complete isolation from the main 

 development of scientific thought, their influence has 

 become pernicious and a barrier to a properly- 

 balanced co-ordination between the old and the 

 new. Every argument they use against scientific 

 specialisation untempered by humanistic influences 

 applies with much greater aptness to their stereo- 

 typed humanism, uninstructed by knowledge of the 

 external world, and incapable of adapting itself to a 

 world of men which has changed in essential respects 

 more in the past century than in the whole previous 

 period of recorded history. If they are incapable of 

 growth and development to keep pace with the 

 growth of science, if enthralled with the contempla- 

 tion of the world as it was they cannot envisage the 

 world as it is, science would be the last to deny them 

 a sanctuary in the ancient homes of learning, but 



