54 The Higher Usefulness of Science 



for sore consciences in innumerable deeds of injustice 

 and cruelty, especially in the business world? And I 

 would insist that there is no legitimate rule of law or 

 reason by which any department of human knowledge 

 can claim immunity from moral responsibility for the 

 promulgation of any doctrine so potent in its influence 

 on human conduct as has been that of natural selection 

 and the survival of the fittest. 



The general story of man's knowledge of nature and 

 of the influence of that knowledge on his higher life, is 

 written in type so large and language so simple as to 

 make it seem impossible that any educated person could 

 have missed reading and understanding it. But again 

 has the impossible happened, to judge from utterances 

 that come to one's ears from diverse quarters. It is 

 surprising enough to hear a literary man of the emi- 

 nence of G. K. Chesterton declare that science is "a 

 thing on the outskirts of human life" that "it has 

 nothing to do with the center of human life at all." 

 But when eminent men of science give expression to 

 much the same view we can but ask in amazement, is it 

 then possible that the history of science and civiliza- 

 tion, and likewise that supreme fruitage of scientific 

 discovery, the universal interdependency among the 

 parts of nature, have left the intellects and imagina- 

 tions of such men wholly untouched? Never shall I 

 forget the reply an eminent biologist once told me he 

 made to sociologists, economists, educators and so on, 

 when they ply him with the query "what has biology to 



