32 PART J.THE PROBLEM. 



siastic about science, we have in mind chiefly the large results 

 achieved since the Renascence by the class of men conventionally 

 called men of science, and the ingenious methods employed by 

 them in research use of instruments, experiment, and mathe- 

 matics. Perhaps in a thousand years' time men will understand 

 by science something as far outstripping in serviceableness 

 modern science as modern science outdistances the science of 

 Aristotle's and Averroes' days in this matter. There is no 

 occult quality inherent in the word science, for the laxest 

 magic and the severest inductive procedure occupy one rising 

 plane. 1 Speculative or objective method, deductive or inductive 

 method, represent historic phases, all of which appear, and 

 even are, right at certain periods. Belief in dogma or rejection 

 of authority is also immaterial to the historical definition of 

 science. The one distinguishing feature of the method of science 

 observable historically is the progressive approximation to more 

 and more successful methods of systematically, definitely, and 

 convincingly establishing comprehensive uniformities. 



For our own day we should draw a somewhat sharp distinction 

 between the world of science and the world of common sense. 

 This distinction is manifestly justified when we reflect that to- 

 day science aims primarily at theory and common sense pri- 

 marily at practice. Whereas, therefore, the scientist is absorbed 

 in understanding a microscopic section of existence, the layman 

 generally thinks of how to procure comforts and luxuries. For 

 this reason the layman perceives as a rule only the gross, 

 coarse-grained facts, and is frequently interested in these alone, 

 whilst his conclusions are crude ones, in harmony with his 

 narrow experience and his homely wants. The scientist, on 

 the other hand, esteems no effort too strenuous or too pro- 

 longed to achieve a slight advance in comprehending a small 

 part of nature. Therefore, as the one invents machinery in 

 order to augment wealth and render social life safe and tolerable 

 and co-operates with his fellows to this end, so the other, 

 joining with fellow-labourers, explores the rich mines of fact 

 by means of special instruments and the most patient syste- 

 matised thought. The one desires to possess the world; the 

 other to comprehend it. In the present age, therefore, com- 

 mon knowledge and scientific knowledge, the world of prac- 

 tice and the world of theory, tend too frequently to lie far 

 apart, with the significant exception of the applied sciences 

 and arts, scientific management of industry and commerce, 



1 The following stages in the historical development of science may be 

 roughly discriminated: unconsciousness of problems; magic; fetichism ; 

 polytheism and philosophy; Greek, Roman, and Eastern science; theism; 

 Arab school; Aristotle revived; earlier and later renascence; seventeenth and 

 eighteenth century speculations, gropings, and advances; and the measurably 

 superior speculations, gropings, and advances, of the nineteenth and twentieth 

 centuries. 



