52 The Higher Usefulness of Science 



of civilized society, and one of the questions not yet 

 cleared up is that of how far it can push certain of its 

 socially good activities before they become socially bad 

 activities. Science has yet to take to heart the great 

 moral injunction about running good things into the 

 ground. Indeed, an exceedingly important aspect of 

 the socialization of all sorts of activity is the problem 

 of recognizing when service passes over into disservice. 

 The world war now raging is apparently going to 

 compel a very searching examination of the relation 

 of science to the social and moral life of man. The 

 problem will, I think, be found to have two quite dis- 

 tinct aspects. One of these will be a series of questions 

 as to how far science may push its activities and appli- 

 cations in particular directions with good results to 

 the community at large; or, stating the matter from 

 the other direction, how far such activities may go 

 before they become harmful to the community. Illus- 

 trative questions here are: How far may medicine and 

 hygiene advantageously push regulative measures in 

 their provinces? Where are the points beyond which 

 their efforts would become first inconvenient, then irri- 

 tating, and finally obnoxious and unbearable? How 

 far may the principle of specialization in the study of 

 different realms of nature be carried before the isolat- 

 ing tendencies reach the point where the specialist 

 ceases to be a social being in a real sense where the 

 pathological bacteriologist, for example, or the elec- 

 trical engineer, is no longer anything significant, even 



