124 SCIENCE AND THE WAR 



in the trenches : " Civilised Man, in his latest 

 art of war, has gone back to be taught one more 

 simple lesson by the beast of the field and the 

 birds of the air ; the armed hosts are hushed and 

 stilled by the passing air-machine, exactly as the 

 finches and field-mice of hedgerow and ditch and 

 field are frozen to stillness by the shadow of a 

 hovering hawk, the beat of its passing wing." 



No ; an existence passed under conditions of 

 this kind and as the normal state of affairs is not 

 an existence to be contemplated with equanimity. 

 We are anxious that science and scientific teaching 

 should be assisted in every possible way. But let 

 us be quite clear that while science has much to 

 teach us and we much to learn from her, there 

 are things as to which she has no message to the 

 world. The Minor Prophets of science are 

 never tired of advising theologians to keep their 

 hands off science. The Major Prophets are too 

 busy to occupy themselves with such polemics. 

 But the theologian is abundantly in his right 

 in saying to the scientific writer " Hands off 

 morals ! " for with morality science has nothing 

 to do. Let us at any rate avoid that form of 

 kultur which consists in bending Natural History 

 to the teaching of conduct, uncorrected by any 

 Christian injunctions to soften its barbarities. 



