SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD 



touch with the needs and activities of common life may 

 well act as a stimulus to that alertness of mind which is 

 most favourable to scientific progress and discovery. Still, 

 after all, in principle the older men were in the right, for 

 the idea underlying the academic grove and the cloister, 

 and for which these external conditions of life were then 

 considered necessary namely, simplicity of living and 

 absolute devotion to the pure quest of truth, unswayed by 

 the glittering tinsel of social distinction and success are 

 precisely those conditions of being which find access to 

 Nature's most secret places. Surely a man who is able to 

 devote himself to the study of Nature has as good a position 

 as the world is able to confer. The Society has never 

 before stood so high as at the present time with regard to 

 its scientific activity, and to the number and quality of the 

 papers published in its Proceedings and Transactions.] 



If the methods and discoveries of science can exert 

 the large influence on general thought which I have claimed 

 for them, some explanation may be needed of the great 

 slowness of any incoming, to an appreciable extent, of a 

 wider and freer spirit during the first centuries of the 

 Royal Society's existence. Two hundred years went 

 slowly by without any very marked change in this respect 

 showing itself in the intellectual attitude of the people. 

 The public mind, on all questions which have to do with 

 man's position in relation to Nature, still slumbered on 

 under the narcotic influence of traditions which were re- 

 garded as too sacred to be open to discussion. Still, 

 G 97 



