Things Worth While 29 



works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that 

 have pleasure therein," and to-day all pure science is 

 but an endeavor to describe the method of the work- 

 ing, the energizing, the becoming, the evolution of the 

 universe as of some vast unfolding flower set by time's 

 eternal river. 



Again, as immediate sequence to what has just been 

 said, it is worth while in your education to know the 

 world-spirit, the Zeitgeist, the intellectual attitude and 

 atmosphere of the time in which you live. This varies 

 from generation to generation. There are in each age, 

 say in each century, certain intellectual conditions under 

 which alone is possible, not thought only, but all setting 

 forth of thought. Thus, the dominant intellectual note 

 of the eighteenth century was religious scepticism as 

 illustrated in the work of such a man as Voltaire ; that 

 of the nineteenth, the evolutionary interpretation of the 

 variety of the living world. No man in either period 

 could successfully put forth anything from his own 

 literary or mental workshop, and ignore the electric in- 

 tellectual conditions under which all thinking men of 

 his time were living. Humanity seems able to concern 

 itself with but one thing at a time and while interested 

 in that, relates to that one, dominant, over-mastering 

 note, all the minor strains of the concerto. I believe 

 that our particular phase of the science-impulse is large- 

 ly spent. Perhaps he who reviews the twentieth century 

 as we here look back upon that just ended, may speak 

 of sociology as affording to the world of thought its 

 dominant tone and chord. 



In any event, in all our educational efforts it is worth 



