2 THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 



On the other hand, however, we have made little or 

 no progress in moral and social life, in comparison 

 with earlier centuries ; at times there has been serious 

 reaction. And from this obvious conflict there have 

 arisen, not only an uneasy sense of dismemberment 

 and falseness, but even the danger of grave catastrophes 

 in the political and social world. It is, then, not 

 merely the right, but the sacred duty, of every 

 right-minded and humanitarian thinker to devote him- 

 self conscientiously to the settlement of that conflict, 

 and to warding off the dangers that it brings in its 

 train. In our conviction this can only be done by a 

 courageous effort to attain the truth, and by the 

 formation of a clear view of the world — a view that 

 shall be based on truth and conformity to reality. 



If we recall to mind the imperfect condition of 

 science at the beginning of the century, and compare 

 this with the magnificent structure of its closing years, 

 we are compelled to admit that marvellous progress 

 has been make during its course. Every single branch 

 of science can boast that it has, especially during the 

 latter half of the century, made numerous acquisi- 

 tions of the utmost value. Both in our microscopic 

 knowledge of the little and in our telescopic investiga- 

 tion of the great, we have attained an invaluable 

 insight that seemed inconceivable a hundred years 

 ago. Improved methods of microscopic and biolo- 

 gical research have not only revealed to us an 

 invisible world of living things in the kingdom of the 

 protists, full of an infinite wealth of forms, but they 

 have taught us to recognise in the tiny cell the all- 

 pervading " elementary organism " of whose social 

 communities — the tissues — the body of every multi- 

 cellular plant and animal, even that of man, is 



