16 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



But it so happened remarkably late in history that with the 

 discovery of the possibilities of coal there was a great boom in 

 the demand for industrial machinery. At the same time there 

 were thrown up the most marvelous advances in physics and 

 chemistry. Recurring War became not the clashes of mercenary 

 armies, but the catapulting of whole nations at each other. New 

 destructive devices out of the laboratories were raised into the 

 commandants of the course of history. Then science acquired 

 prestige. 



Science as King, science as power, looms as the great new 

 figure, the overshadowing novel factor, in practical statesman- 

 ship. Unlike the factor X in the traditional equation, it is the 

 known factor par excellence, the factor by which the value of all 

 the other factors of human life will be ascertained and solved. 

 As knowledge of the conditions determining all life, it stands as 

 the courageous David of the race against the Goliath territory 

 of the uncontrollable and the inevitable, even the unknowable. 

 Human history resolves itself into the drama: Science contra 

 Fate. Quite a change from the vaudeville show of the restless 

 personal ambitions of vindictive fools and greedy scoundrels, the 

 mischief and adventures of half-witted geniuses and licensed 

 rogues that have been figures of the prologue. 



The future of science has become the future of the race. So 

 much of an inkling of the truth is beginning to be appreciated. 

 That is ordinarily taken to mean that the process by which the 

 Wessex man became the New York and London man, the accumu- 

 lation of accidental discoveries and inspired inventions of scat- 

 tered individuals, will go on, providing a succession of marvels 

 and miracles for the careerist and his retinue. Not only is he to 

 be entertained and served by them, but any commercial value will 

 also be exploited by him. The natural wonders of the labora- 

 tories have taken the place of the supernatural absurdities of the 

 medieval mind as a fillip for the imagination of the man in the 

 street. Even spiritualism apes the technique of the physicist. 

 The credulity of reporters alone concerning developments in 

 surgery, for example, is incredible. There is enough rot published 

 daily for a brief to be made out against the idolatry of science. 



The Religion of Science 



Science also as a religion, as a faith to bind men together, as a 

 substitute for the moribund old mythologies and theologies which 



