IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 31 



new order all social units and aggregations are inter- 

 dependent. We are all members of one body. We must 

 not ignore the purely psychic factors of social progress, but 

 these alone could not maintain the new order apart from 

 the physical basis built by science. Were this support 

 withdrawn it would seem that over large areas now occu- 

 pied by civilization, society must lapse and break into 

 fragments, fast degenerating the state of the villages of 

 the Russian plain, the scattered communities of the south- 

 ern Appalachians, or even the Pueblos of Arizona. 



As we have spoken of the service of science in pro- 

 moting the physical well being of society, there remain of 

 Professor Gidding's notes of social progress only the evolu- 

 tion of rational conduct and the consciousness of kind. 

 These phenomena are involved in the evolution of the 

 social mind. Here science acts directly, and also by tlie 

 reflex of the social organism. The organic unity of society 

 is the ground for the expansion of the consciousness of 

 kind. The social ties woven by science help to produce a 

 wider social sympathy. Under the regime of science the 

 barriers of the mark break down everywhere and are 

 transformed into the market, and with their downfall pro- 

 vincialism, indifference and hate of once separated peoples 

 pass away. Science has created, as we have seen, a nevv^ 

 physical environment, which reacts constantly on the 

 social mind, awakening from torpor, stimulating to greater 

 activity, demanding a more alert attention, and a pre- 

 cision and swiftness of movement before unknown. 



Still more directly is science creating an intellectual 

 milieu whose influence on the social mind is as inescapable 

 as is that of climate on the physical life. The world of our 

 forefathers, how close its confines, how dark and shadowy, 

 how uncertain and untrue, compared with the illimitable 

 sphere which science now fills with her clear light. It is 

 a universe, not a multiverse, the new world which science 

 apperceives. It is a world of law, in which each event has 

 adequate cause; the expression of one immanent energy 

 operating across all widths of space and throughout all 

 lengths of time, without loss or increment, and without 



