THE HIGHER VALUES OF SCIENCE 295 



message. " Warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and 

 mirth " pass over our heads on the wings of the air, and the 

 telling of their passage illustrates the presence of natural 

 phenomena concerning which man knoweth naught, but 

 which are not unknowable. Have we not gained far more 

 than we have lost by such advances of science? Imagination 

 need not go unfed, when out of the fog, the night and the 

 distance, as though from another world, comes that which 

 signals Save our Ship, to listening ears a thousand miles 

 away on sea and shore. 



THE ESTHETIC QUALITY IN SCIENTIFIC THINKING 



Esthetic appreciation may seem at first thought to have 

 no place in the field of science. Yet if we analyze the case, 

 our esthetic responses become, when stripped of what is 

 non-essential, intellectual rather than sensuous pleasures. 

 The ' 'good, the beautiful, and the true, " as we see them, are 

 largely that to which we are accustomed, whether it be a 

 social institution, a style hi dress, or a scientific theory. 

 Moreover, their cost, as one critic shows, 6 is a factor whose 

 importance is commonly underrated. But may we not hold 

 to the faith that the beautiful and the ugly represent realities 

 over and above that to which one is accustomed and based 

 upon some measure of thoughtful analysis? The difficulty 

 is in regard to the standard or plane of judgment. Within 

 the purely intellectual realm, however, we are on safer 

 ground. For example, the satisfaction one experiences in the 

 demonstrated theorem or in the chain of evidence when the 

 last link is forged, has its clearly esthetic quality. There is 

 the same feeling of completeness as in beholding the creation 

 of artist or sculptor from which nothing could be taken away 

 or nothing added without marring its perfection. Let it be ad- 

 mitted that we appreciate such things merely because our 

 minds run in certain channels. The fact remains that our 



6 Veblen, T., "The Theory of the Leisure Class." 



