62 SCIENCE AND THE PRESS 
I pass now to another aspect of the subject; I will leave 
the material side. That science so largely affects bodily com- 
fort and material prosperity is to many people one of its 
greatest dangers. I would ask you to consider the effect of 
science on modes of thought; I do not mean on opinion—but — 
on the method of forming opinion. I should tire you if I tried 
to extol science at any length in this respect, for the subject is 
so well worn. But everyone admits, I think, that science has 
brought instruments of precision into the domain of thought | 
which can be used more easily and more safely than any other. 
Science is really an animated logic in which the mind receives 
its first training among real things—real palpable things—not 
mere words or abstractions. Now, many years ago you may 
remember that Matthew Arnold in pronouncing sentence on 
various European nations condemned the English as being 
fundamentally deficient in lucidity. Many people thought he 
justified the charge in making it, for they did not know what 
he meant—and that, in its turn, justified him. I think it is 
not difficult to understand what he meant, and I, for one, 
accept the judgement as just and discerning. On the morrow 
of a General Election, I do not think it necessary to labour 
this point. How then are we to cultivate lucidity? Doubtless 
there are many ways of doing it, but if it involves an improve- 
ment in our methods of getting to the bottom of things, of 
collecting and weighing evidence, of organizing our facts, and 
of generalizing them to a clear conclusion, I cannot see a more 
hopeful expedient than to bring to bear the methods that have 
been so wonderfully successful in the realms of science. I am 
not going to talk politics, as you can well understand, but I ask 
you to consider the Fiscal question from this point of view. 
Just think of the method taken by the country to decide this 
question; think of the kind of appeal to the intelligence that 
has been made ; think of the competence of the average elector 
to weigh up the pros and cons of a question of such complexity. — 
