Science in Public Affairs 



nature, foresees their possible developments, and 

 conceives his ideals of human life in terms of 

 the optimum expression of known potencies. In 

 Bacon's phrase, man controls nature by obeying 

 her. In this respect science is just the ordered 

 and growing knowledge of the ways of nature 

 leading to human evolution. Science, in its pure 

 and applied forms, here stands for the collective 

 resources of the race available for the maintenance 

 and advancement of human life. Science is thus 

 in terms of the illustration used above a sort of 

 generalised mother of men, as it were, a race- 

 mother. And if the policy and ideals of science 

 for her children are slow of formulation, that is 

 because of the slow evolution of science itself. 

 Arrested at the cosmic stage of thought, the 

 majority of scientists do not recapitulate, with 

 sufficient completeness, the racial evolution of the 

 group to which they belong. Such racial re- 

 capitulation is, as has been well said, nature's way 

 of preparing for a fresh start. And unless, there- 

 fore, the individual scientist in his own personal 

 development passes on from the cosmic, physical 

 or naturalist phase to the humanist and idealist 

 phase, he does not undergo the preparation 

 necessary to enable him to contribute to the 

 advancement of science in its proper historical 

 evolution. In this arrested development of most 

 individual scientists is doubtless to be found an 

 explanation of the slow evolution of the humanist 

 or sociologist sciences. 



If we understand by spiritual power a set of 

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