THE SCIENTIFIC MOOD. H 



discovered this year or many years hence — ^by me 

 or by others — what matters it? — it is surely folly 

 to sacrifice for this the joy of life which nothing can 

 replace." Indeed life is not for science, but science 

 for the development cf life. 



These are days of popularising, in magazine ar- 

 ticles and on lecture platforms, and much of this is 

 justifiable and healthy, for science can no longer be 

 defined off as a preserve for the learned. Yet there 

 is the risk of giving a false simplicity to problems, 

 or of suggesting that there are royal roads to learn- 

 ing; the sin easily besets us of depreciating the dig- 

 nity of a hard-won fact. Therefore at the risk of ex- 

 ceeding triteness, we would emphasise that a genuine 

 passion for facts implies a certain seriousness, a rever- 

 ence for what is beneath (in Goethe's words), a re- 

 spect for facts when one gets them. Though we need 

 not be always in the scientific mood — for which we 

 are truly thankful — we must be scientific when we 

 propose so to be. " Science," Bacon said, ^' is not a 

 terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk 

 up and down with a fair prospect." 



What Ave mean by saying that we need not be 

 always scientific is simply that the scientific mood 

 is sometimes unnatural and irrelevant. To botanise 

 upon our mother's grave is the classic illustration, 

 and for another we may refer to the medical man's 

 discovery that Botticelli's " Venus," in the Ufiizi at 

 Florence, is suffering from consumption, and should 

 not be riding across the sea in an open shell, clad so 

 scantily. 



(h) Following from the passion of facts, is a 

 second characteristic of the scientific mood, namely, 

 cautiousness, or distrust of finality and dogmatism 

 of statement. Scotsmen have done well for the ad- 



