SCIENCE AND THE PRESS 63 
And yet how far have we heard from our guides, philosophers © 
and friends any sustained advocacy of a better course? Are 
we to conclude that this country is so inextricably bound in 
the ties of partisanship that it is hopeless to constitute from its 
leading men, a court willing and competent to make an impartial 
inquiry, to collect and weigh evidence on a complex question 
of vital national importance, and to declare an opinion con- 
ceived in the interests of the nation as a whole? | 
You will ask what can science do here? I do not give 
a direct answer. I can only say that the more familiarity we 
have as a nation with the methods of science, the more we 
shall distrust mob-law, the more we shall learn that the pre- 
judices, the jealousies, the vested interests, the intolerance 
which inevitably arise when well-meaning men segregate 
themselves into parties, sects, and schools of thought, are 
fetters on the mind and spirit, and an incalculable hindrance 
to human progress. A vicious loyalty is created which makes 
men aggressive and vindictive towards those who consort in 
a different school of thought; which makes them palter 
with the truth and finds them in extremity driven to the 
expedient, now so evident in the world, of maintaining that 
white is only a lighter, and black a darker, shade of grey. 
I commend to you most earnestly, I hope not arrogantly, 
the task of doing more than you have yet done to educate 
the people in the knowledge, the love, and the right use of 
science. The century that has not long closed has brought to 
mankind intellectual weapons mightier even than those forged 
in the days of ancient Greece, and we are, consciously or not, 
on the wave of an intellectual movement of overwhelming 
force. 
Science is one of the things in this world that must con- 
tinue to grow in power and influence. Its march is irresistible 
and endless, a progress from which there can be no retreat. 
The hypotheses of science vary from day to day; the fabric 
