49.6 



NATURE 



[February 21, 19 18 



by sporadic flashes of. prophetic inspiration. They are 

 the expressions of the creative intellect of man operat- 

 ing under a certain discipline of thought, inspired by 

 the one undeviating desire to understand, and by under- 

 standing to control, the environment in which we have 

 our being. 



Essentially the same discipline of thought and essen- 

 tially analogous expansions of economic opportunity 

 have been operative and determinative forces at all 

 stages of man's development. The foreshortening of our 

 remote past, due to its relatively immense distance 

 from our own lives and the accelerated evolution of 

 our own day, tends to render us forgetful of the 

 obscure struggles and achievements of our ancestors. 

 Yet the peoples from whom we sprang did not lack 

 their Faradays or Pasteurs, upon whose accumulated 

 labours they fashioned new civilisations and rose to 

 greater and ever greater mastery over the inanimate, 

 brute forces to which our yet remoter forbears paid 

 the homage inspired by fear. This is the primary 

 impelling force which fashions the fluctuating yet ever- 

 progressing evolution of man, the force of creative 

 human intellect, perchance inspired, yet inspired not 

 without preparatory labour, for, in the words of Pas- 

 teur, "Chance favours only the prepared mind." 



If the woof of the fabric of history is economic, the 

 warp is supplied by the creative curiosity of man, 

 operating under the discipline of thought which we 

 now call 'scientific," and culminating in discoveries 

 and inventions. 



It is strange how little suspicion of these facts enters 

 into the minds of the typical products of modern 

 scientific pedagogy, the vast number of students who 

 in our day patiently submit themselves for years to 

 the exacting discipline of scientific training in order 

 that they may apply it hereafter to the solution of the 

 immediate practical or theoretical problems of their 

 time. The more prolonged and extensive their train- 

 ing, the more intensely specialised their interests be- 

 come, until the material and spiritual welfare of the_ 

 vast human family, which alone confers meaning and' 

 dignity upon their task, becomes a matter of utter 

 indifference in comparison with the identification of a 

 diatom or the measurement of the angle of a crystal. 



There can be little question that as pedagogues and 

 expositors, with a few brilliant exceptions, scientific 

 scholars and investigators have failed, and that in a 

 manner and to a degree most disastrous to the welfare 

 of their chosen field of intellectual endeavour. _ Not- 

 withstanding several decades of widespread training in 

 scientific method and the scientific discipline of 

 thought, and notwithstanding, also, the multitude of 

 technically skilled and professionally trained men who 

 have issued from our laboratories, there is as yet 

 little or no sympathy or understanding displayed by 

 the public, or even by our own pupils, with the larger 

 problems and broader aspects of science. The reason 

 is not far to seek ; deficient sympathy and insight have 

 propagated their like, and we are merely reaping that 

 which we have sown. We have taught our pupils to 

 regard science as axt arid, inhuman outgrowth of pure 

 intellectualism, useful perchance, but not endearing, 

 interesting perchance as chess is interesting, but never 

 touching the deeper problems and broader aspirations 

 of mankind save to wither our illusions and proffer 

 the material bait oi utility in their stead-. Our dis- 

 cipline of thought has taught us to shun hasty general- 

 isation, but we have taught our pupils never to- 

 generalise at all, and in teaching them, to contemplate 

 and to conquer the difficulties that lie at hand we_ have 

 deprived them of the exalted vision of the- ultimate 

 goals towards which our labours are directed. Thus 

 have we earned, and most richly deserved, the in- 

 difference or the veritable hostility of the public, and, 

 crowning absurdity of all, the sciences are, every where 

 proclaimed antagonistic to the "humanities." 

 NO. 2521, VOL. 100] 



How gross is the caricature of our ideals and our 

 functions which we have implanted in the rtiinds of our 

 contemporaries may be gathered- from the words of 

 the great founders of the scientific scho.ol of thought. 

 Witness the exalted vision of their labours embodied in 

 the utterances of three great physicists, representatives 

 of three distinct epochs of scientific thought : " I do 

 not know what I may appear to the world," said New- 

 ton, "but to myself I seem to have been only like a 

 boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now 

 and then in finding a smoother pebble or a prettier 

 shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth 

 lay all undiscovered before me." "The laws of 

 Nature," said Oersted, "are the thoughts of God," 

 or, in the words of a master of our own day, J. J. 

 Thomson: "As we conquer peak after peak, we see 

 in front of us regions full of interest and beauty, but 

 we do not see our goal, we do not see the horizon ; in 

 the distance tower still higher peaks, which will yield 

 to those who ascend them still wider prospects, and 

 deepen the feeling, the truth of which is emphasised 

 by every advance in science, that ' Great are the works 

 of the Lord.' " Or, in regard to the function of science 

 towards the welfare of humanity, compare the pro- 

 phetic utterances of Harvey : "We can never want 

 matter for- new experiments. We are as yet got little 

 further than to the surface of things: we must be 

 content, in this our infant state of knowledge, while 

 we know in part only, to imitate children, who^ for 

 want of better skill and abilities and of more proper 

 materials, amuse themselves with slight buildings. 

 The further advances we make in the knowledge of 

 Nature the more probable and the nearer to truth will 

 our conjectures approach; so that succeeding genera- 

 tions, who shall nave the benefit and advantage both 

 of their own observations and those of preceding gene- 

 rations, may then make considerable advances, ' when 

 many shall run to and fro and knowledge shaJl be 

 increased,'" with the words of Pasteur, written two 

 hundred and fifty years later : " Science is in our age 

 the soul of the prosperity of nations and the living 

 source of all progress. Without doubt the politician 

 with his tedious and perpetual discussions seems tO: be 

 our guide. Vain illusion ! That which leads us is 

 scientific discovery and its applications." And yet the 

 material welfare of man is not the chief justification 

 of science, for, in the words of the same master : "The 

 cultivation of the sciences in their highest expression 

 is perhaps more necessary to the moral welfare of a 

 nation than to its material prosperity." 



In these utterances we read, not the cheap hope of 

 material gain or the paltry personal triumph of the 

 clever solver of an intricate intellectual puzzle, but a 

 sense of "something far more deeply interfused," an 

 expression of the awe and abiding wonder which the 

 contemplation ot our universe compels, and a deep 

 conviction of the vast underlying import of natural 

 law in the welfare and aspirations of mankind. Why; 

 then, do we so diligently wrap up these aspirations and 

 convictions in formulse and conceal them under the 

 cloak of a pedantic affectation of hypercritical exacti- 

 tude? There is a grandeur in science, wide as the 

 universe itself. There is a human import of. science, 

 embracing the material and social welfare of the 

 totality of mankind. Would it not, then, be well to 

 convev some suspicion of these facts to our pupils? 



We have succeeded' after many years of conflict with 

 educational authorities in introducing scientific studies 

 into the curriculum of schools, but what have we 

 accomplished thereby? Through the agency of the 

 compulsory dissection of flowers, the unalleviated 

 algebra of statics, or the uncertain pursuit of the elusive 

 elements of a chemical " unknown," we have given rise 

 to a rooted aversion to science in the minds of many 

 and have attracted a few to the pursuit of science^ for 

 the sake of material gain» but in how many minds 



