SCIENCE AND THE PRESS 63 



And yet how far have we heard from our guides, philosophers 

 and friends any sustained advocacy of a better course ? Are 

 we to conclude that this country is so inextricably bound in 

 the ties of partisanship that it is hopeless to constitute from its 

 leading men, a court willing and competent to make an impartial 

 inquiry, to collect and weigh evidence on a complex question 

 of vital national importance, and to declare an opinion con- 

 ceived in the interests of the nation as a whole ? 



You will ask what can science do here? I do not give 

 a direct answer. I can only say that the more familiarity we 

 have as a nation with the methods of science, the more we 

 shall distrust mob-law, the more we shall learn that the pre- 

 judices, the jealousies, the vested interests, the intolerance 

 which inevitably arise when well-meaning men segregate 

 themselves into parties, sects, and schools of thought, are 

 fetters on the mind and spirit, and an incalculable hindrance 

 to human progress. A vicious loyalty is created which makes 

 men aggressive and vindictive towards those who consort in 

 a different school of thought; which makes them palter 

 with the truth and finds them in extremity driven to the 

 expedient, now so evident in the world, of maintaining that 

 white is only a lighter, and black a darker, shade of grey. 



I commend to you most earnestly, I hope not arrogantly, 

 the task of doing more than you have yet done to educate 

 the people in the knowledge, the love, and the right use of 

 science. The century that has not long closed has brought to 

 mankind intellectual weapons mightier even than those forged 

 in the days of ancient Greece, and we are, consciously or not, 

 on the wave of an intellectual movement of overwhelming 

 force. 



Science is one of the things in this world that must con- 

 tinue to grow in power and influence. Its march is irresistible 

 and endless, a progress from which there can be no retreat. 

 The hypotheses of science vary from day to day ; the fabric 



