Science in Public Affairs 



lost the instinctive desire for a general doctrine of 

 social evolution. It survives also in a limited num- 

 ber of sociologists, many of whom are reluctant to 

 be labelled with that title. Thus the dispersion 

 and isolation of the sociologists, and the ignorance 

 and unpopularity of the name, are due not so much 

 to the hardness of the word, or the difficulty of 

 the doctrine, as to the prevailing inability of the 

 folk-mind to distinguish between sociology and 

 socialism, between science and scepticism. 



IV 



Thus, owing mainly to the incompleteness and 

 sterility of the social sciences, the unification of 

 science is very far from being a visible reality, and 

 consequently the influence of the scientific party is 

 relatively slight in every country of the occidental 

 world, and least important of all perhaps in Great 

 Britain, with the possible exception of Spain and 

 Venezuela. It is but the other day that the only high- 

 level meteorological observatory of Great Britain 

 was closed, and the staff dispersed, the records 

 ignored even without examination, and the apparatus 

 offered for public sale all because the influence of 

 the scientific party was not equal to securing for 

 its support about 500 out of the one hundred and 

 forty odd millions which constitute the annual 

 national budget. In laudable over-estimate of the 

 desire of other European Governments to possess 

 meteorologists, the Government of the Argentine 

 Republic cabled to secure the staff of the Ben 



228 



