SCIENCE AND PROGRESS 



cine like to the Pasteur Institute in Paris. The 

 times have changed. 



But it was a rueful day for human progress and 

 human freedom when the intellectual leader in the 

 most cultured nation upon the earth could thus 

 throw his influence to block the spread of the scien- 

 tific method among the people. I set down the 

 silly, supercilious attitude of Plato as likely to have 

 been fraught with more of evil for the next suc- 

 ceeding thousand years of history than that of any 

 Christian bishop. 



Thankfully, that day is passed. No Plato's 

 sneer, no threats of rack and stake, may now turn 

 away men's minds from the investigation and the 

 conquest of nature. There is a new order and a 

 new thought. And to-day mechanics is the foun- 

 dation upon which the whole superstructure of 

 science rests. Men are striving now to explain the 

 phenomena of mind in terms of physiology; we 

 have what is called the physiological psychology. 

 In turn, we endeavor to represent the physiological 

 functions, the phenomena of life, in terms of chem- 

 istry ; the whole trend of biology is now oriented that 

 way. Bio-chemistry is the study of the hour. In 

 its turn again, chemical actions, the so-called chem- 

 ical affinities, are being reduced to measures of elec- 

 tricity and heat, and simple gravitational attrac- 

 tion ; we have the new physical chemistry, or what 



