36 National Life 



lads have developed into men who are suc- 

 ceeding in life. And the reason of this seems 

 to me, when considering their individual 

 cases, to be that they could adapt themselves 

 to an environment more or less different 

 from that of the existing profession ; they 

 could go beyond its processes, its formulae 

 and its facts, and develop new ones. Their 

 knowledge of method and their powers of 

 observation enabled them to supply new 

 needs, to answer to the call when there was 

 a demand, not for old knowledge, but for 

 trained brains. 



Here, I think, is the point where we 

 reach the second great function of science in 

 national life. The first function is to show \ 

 us what national life means, and how tti 

 nation is a vast organism subject as much to 

 the great forces of evolution as any other 

 gregarious type of life. There is a struggle 

 of race against race and of nation against 

 nation. In the early days of that struggle it 

 was a blind, unconscious struggle of barbaric 

 tribes. At the present day, in the case of 

 the civilized white man, it has become more 

 and more the conscious, carefully directed 



