10 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



mood of the dominantly practical man, whose 

 whole trend is towards doing, not towards know- 

 ing. He must, of course, know his facts if his 

 doings are to be effective, and he must, likewise, 

 have sound social feeling if his doings are to be 

 deeds, not misdeeds; and no one will seek to 

 dispute that the practical man has a firm grip 

 of facts, and that he is often full of that kindli- 

 ness which marks a strong development of the 

 kin-instinct. Yet he himself would be the first 

 to point out that he had no particular hunger or 

 thirst after the descriptive formulae which Science 

 seeks to supply. So far as Science means that 

 kind of knowledge which is Foresight, that kind 

 of Foresight which is Power, he believed in it, 

 but on the whole it did not interest him. Simi- 

 larly, while he would confess to a pleasure in 

 friendly relations between man and man, and 

 between man and his beasts, and to a sometimes 

 apparently hyperaesthetic sense of order, he would 

 admit, on the whole, that aesthetic emotion was 

 not much in his line. He was not built that way. 

 There is obviously much to be said for the 

 dominant practical mood. It is as natural and 

 necessary and dignified as any other. Science 

 grew out of practical lore, and fresh vigour has 

 often come to science by a tightening of its touch 

 with the business of everyday life. How much 

 mathematics, for instance, both simple and subtle. 



