I206 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



at play, men at work in the open air, the members of a golf club, 

 the exhibitors at a honey-show, a morning train emptying at a city 

 terminus, the crews of the trawlers when they come into port, the 

 jollity of a country fair — ^in a hundred directions we find evidence 

 of a strong current of healthfulness in our midst. There is no warrant 

 for an alarmist position. Yet if we take a friendly doctor with us 

 on our survey, we soon discover that things are not quite so satis- 

 factory as they seem; and when we correct our impressions with 

 vital statistics we lose all our complacency. There is much disease 

 in our midst — overflowing hospitals and asylums and overworked 

 panel doctors; there is much venereal disease, though there are 

 signs of alleviation and though its incidence varies greatly in dif- 

 ferent towns; there is much depressed vitality and dispiritedness, 

 sex-mischief and sex-disharmony; there are still many forms of 

 work that are to a considerable extent im wholesome; there are 

 many houses that even the miracle of love can scarce make homes. 



In face of these evils, there are many to ask: Who will show us 

 any good? And it is well at the outset to recognise that there are 

 many answers, each with its contribution. Those who feel the old 

 ideals fading from their former powers say, for instance, that what 

 we most need is a new heart; social renewal requires religious 

 revival, and thereby moral renewal with it. Others say that above 

 all we need changes in our social organisation, for we are enmeshed 

 in a net handed down from the early industrial age — a net in which 

 we struggle without getting free from its entanglement. Thus our 

 best efforts are often baulked. Besides these two most frequent 

 answers, there are others, most of them of value ; but our particular 

 concern here is with the help that science can give. 



Man's appeal to medical knowledge is in a measure an appeal to 

 science, and goes back to antiquity, but the wider idea of the control 

 of life by science is modem. Bacon had it, of course, as when he 

 spoke of science as "a rich storehouse for the glory of the creator, 

 and for the relief of man's estate", or when, in reference to his 

 "Solomon's House", he said: "The end of our foundation is the 

 knowledge of causes and the secret motions of things to the enlarge- 

 ment of the bounds of human empire and the effecting of all things 

 possible." But great steps towards such mastery have been made 

 since Bacon's day, and it is with justified hopefulness that we invoke 

 the aid of science to help us amid our sea of troubles. Science is for 

 life, said Herbert Spencer, not life for science. The days of folded 

 hands and fatalism are over; science is always meliorist; its watch- 

 word is: Face the facts; observe and scrutinise them; then try to 

 understand them; control will follow. Thus in regard to health and 

 social hygiene, we ask: What can Science do? 



What can Science do for "the relief of man's estate"? But our 

 question should rather be: What can science not do? Let us think 



