104 BIOLOGY AND THE STATE II 



to signify that the progress of science is not a matter 

 which profoundly influences every factor in the well- 

 being of the community. Amongst such people there 

 is a positive hatred of science, which finds expression 

 in their exclusion of it, even at this day, from the 

 ordinary curriculum of public school education, and 

 in the baseless though oft -repeated calumny that 

 science is hostile to art, and is responsible for all that 

 is harsh, ugly, and repulsive in modern life. To such 

 opponents of the advancement of science, it is of little 

 use to offer explanations and arguments. But we 

 may, when we reflect on their instinctive hostility 

 and the misrepresentations of science and the scientific 

 spirit which it leads them to disseminate, console 

 ourselves by bringing to mind what science really is, 

 and what truly is the nature of that calling in which a 

 man who makes new knowledge is engaged. 



They mock at the botanist as a pedant, and the 

 zoologist as a monomaniac ; they execrate the physi- 

 ologist as a monster of cruelty, and brand the geolo- 

 gist as a blasphemer ; chemistry is held responsible for 

 the abomination of aniline dyes and the pollution of 

 rivers, and physics for the dirt and misery of great 

 factory towns. By these unbelievers science is 

 declared responsible for individual eccentricities of 

 character, as well as for the sins of the commercial 

 utilisers of new knowledge. The pursuit of science is 

 said to produce a dearth of imagination, incapability 

 of enjoying the beauty either of nature or of art, 

 scorn of literary culture, arrogance, irreverence, vanity, 

 and the ambition of personal glorification. 



