84 The Higher Usefulness of Science 



close the door to truth." I agree with Dawson that 

 Confucius appears to have seen the vital importance 

 of mental morality more clearly than it has been un- 

 derstood by any philosophy which has gained practical 

 importance in the western world, not even excepting 

 the Platonic and the Kantian. 



It is desirable to be explicit as to wherein the philos- 

 ophies which have had greatest ethical potency in 

 western civilization have gone seriously wrong. 

 Neither Christian theology nor modern science has 

 frankly acknowledged the limitations to what they 

 know about the origin of man, of living nature gen- 

 erally, and of the world. They have assumed more 

 understanding than they have on the subject, and on 

 that assumption they have based judgments and esti- 

 mates of men and society and nations. Most disas- 

 trously important of all, the hypotheses concerning 

 man's origin which they have erected into dogmas, 

 tend to the belittlement, even to the degradation of 

 man. The "poor worm of earth" theory of man that 

 has figured so largely in Christian teaching; and the 

 "nothing but" chemical substances, and animality, so 

 persistently preached by recent biology, are dis- 

 tinctly subversive of all that is best in human nature. 



Let us return to Confucius for a moment. The em- 

 phasis he put on mental morality was part and parcel 

 of his general reverence for learning and truth, and 

 learning for him meant investigation of things com- 

 mon things. "Looking up he contemplates the brilliant' 



