THE SCIENTIFIC MOOD 9 



In those early days the various moods that 

 we are familiar with such as the scientific, the 

 artistic, and the philosophic had not become 

 defined off from an oppressive practical mood. 

 Very gradually, however, Man got a firmer foot- 

 hold in the struggle for existence, and was able 

 to raise his head and look at the stars. He dis- 

 covered the year with its marvellous object-lesson 

 of recurrent sequences a discovery which was 

 one of the first great steps towards science, and 

 he became vividly aware that his race had a 

 history. He had time, too, for a conscious en- 

 joyment of Nature, which came to mean more 

 and more to him. Here and there, perhaps, some 

 began to ponder over the significance of their 

 experience. Gradually, at all events, as the ages 

 passed, various moods became, as we say, dif- 

 ferentiated from one another, and men began to 

 be contrasted according as this or that mood was 

 more habitual with them. Men of action, men 

 of feeling, and men of thought, these were the 

 three primary types, which are now-a-days split 

 up into minor types. They correspond, obvi- 

 ously, to doing, feeling, and knowing; to hand, 

 heart, and head; to practice, emotional activity, 

 and intellectual inquiry. That we may better 

 understand the scientific mood, let us consider for 

 a little the others. 



THE PRACTICAL MOOD. First there is the 



