THE CIVIL SERVICE 73 



Unfortunately, however, the times are too serious 

 for ridicule. At the first prick of the lance of a 

 scientific enemy, the indispensability of science to 

 the nation, if it is to continue to exist, became 

 for the first time universally recognised. Were she 

 all that her worst and most ignorant detractors 

 have alleged, wooed she must be in earnest now, 

 if only for the defence of her superior sisters. Before 

 that realisation, every sort of objection that cant 

 has hitherto invented to bar the way must now go 

 down. We shall be a stronger people in future 

 in the competitions of peace, as well as in the 

 actual struggle of war, in consequence, but this will 

 be but a small gain indeed compared with what 

 we shall become if science teaches the nation to 

 recognise Truth apart from traditional belief. To 

 those to whom science is associated only with the 

 carnage of the battlefield or with the hubbub of 

 the market-place such an aspiration will be unin- 

 telligible. Nevertheless, to-day, in the orgy of lying 

 which has accompanied the war, scientific truth is 

 the only aspect of truth that has not been cheapened 

 and made nauseating, and which stands so far 

 above all personal prejudice and passion as to 

 be unshaken. Until a similar veracity of thought 

 and action becomes universal, there can, in the words 

 of Huxley, be no alleviation of the sufferings of 

 mankind. 



The cult of science is becoming daily, almost 

 hourly, more difficult to gainsay, but, in the curricula 

 of the ancient universities, a culture that reached 

 its zenith before the birth of Christ still struggles 

 to retain its complete ascendency in human affairs 

 and over the human mind. It has been said of 

 mathematical analysis that it is merely a mill. 

 Nothing can be got out in the answer, which, 

 wittingly or unwittingly, was not introduced in the 



