500 



NA TURE 



[September 19, 1901 



that sequel. These are our tangible heritage, and upon them 

 we should fix our attention. 



In the first place, the progress of science has been steadily 

 opposed to, and as steadily opposed by, the adherents of man's 

 primitive concepts of the universe. The domain of the natural 

 has constantly widened and the domain of the supernatural has 

 constantly narrowed. So far, at any rate, as evil spirits are 

 concerned, they have been completely cast out from the realm 

 of science. The arch fiend and the lesser princes of darkness 

 are no longer useful even as an hypothesis. We have reached — 

 if I may again use the cautious language of diplomacy — a satis- 

 factory modus vivendi if we have not attained permanent peace 

 in all our foreign relations. Enlightened man has come to see 

 that his highest duty is to cooperate with Nature, that he may 

 expect to get on very well if he heeds her advice, and that he 

 may expect to fare very ill if he disregards it. 



Secondly, it appears to have been demonstrated that neither 

 the a priori method of the dogmatists nor the historico-critical 

 method of the humanists is alone adequate for the attainment of 

 definite knowledge of either the internal or the external world, 

 or of their relations to one another. In fact, it has been shown 

 over and over again that man cannot trust his unaided senses 

 even in the investigation of the simplest and most obvious 

 material phenomena. There is an ever present need of a correc- 

 tion for personal equation. Left to himself, the a />w;V reasoner 

 weaves from the tangled skein of thought webs so well tied by 

 logical knots that there is no escape for the imprisoned mind 

 except by the rude process applied to cobwebs. And in the 

 serenity of his repose behind the fortress of " liberal culture" 

 the reactionary humanist will prepare apologies for errors and 

 patch up compromises between traditional beliefs and sound 

 learning with such consummate literary skill that even " the 

 good demon of doubt " is almost persuaded that if knowledge 

 did not come to an end long ago it will soon reach its limit. 

 In short, we have learned, or ought to have learned, from ample 

 experience, that in the search for definite, verifiable knowledge 

 we should beware of the investigator whose equipment consists of 

 a bundle of traditions and dogmas along with formal logic and 

 a facile pen ; for we may be sure that he will be more deeply 

 concerned with the question of the safety than with the question 

 of the soundness of scientific doctrines. 



Thirdly, it has been demonstrated equally clearly and far 

 more cogently that the sort of knowledge we call scientific, 

 knowledge which has in it the characteristics of immanence and 

 permanence, is founded on observation and experiment. The 

 rise and growth of every science illustrate this fact. Even pure 

 mathematics, commonly held to be the a priori science par 

 excellence, and sometimes called " the science of necessary con- 

 clusions," is no exception to the rule. Those who would found 

 mathematics on a higher plane have apparently forgotten to 

 consider the contents of the mathematician's waste-basket. The 

 slow and painful steps by which astronomy has grown out of 

 astrology and chemistry out of alchemy; and the faltering, 

 tedious, and generally hotly contested advances of geology and 

 biology, have been made secure only by the remorseless disregard 

 which observational and experimental evidence has shown for 

 the foregone conclusions of the dogmatists and the literary 

 opinions of the humanists. Thus it has been proved by the 

 rough logic of facts and events that the rude processes of " trial 

 and error," processes which many philosophers and some men 

 of science still affect to despise, are the most effective means 

 yet devised by man for the discovery of truth and for the 

 eradication of error. 



These facts are so well known to most of you, so much a 

 matter of ingrained experience, that the categorical mention of 

 them here may seem like a rehearsal of truisms. But it is one 

 of the paradoxes of human development that errors which 

 have been completely dislodged from the minds of the few may 

 still linger persistently in the minds of the many, and that the 

 misleading hypotheses and the dead theories of one age may be 

 resuscitated again and again in succeeding ages. Thus, to cite 

 one of the simplest examples, it doubtless appeared clear to the 

 Alexandrian school that the flat, four-cornered earth of con- 

 temporary myths would speedily give way to the revelations of 

 geometry and astronomy. How inadequate such revelations 

 proved to be at that time is one of the mo.st startling disclosures 

 in all history. The "Divine School of Alexandria" passed 

 into oblivion. The myth of a flat and four-cornered earth was 

 crystallised into a dogma strong enough to bear the burden of 

 men's souls by Cosmas Indicopleustes in the sixth century ; it 



NO. 1664, VOL. 64] 



was supported with still more invincible arguments by Martin 

 Luther in the sixteenth century ; and it was revived and main- 

 tained with not less truly admirable logic, as such, by John 

 Hampden and John Jasper in the last decades of the nineteenth 

 century. To cite examples from contemporary history showing 

 how difficult it is for the human mind to get above its primi- 

 tive conceptions, one needs only to refer to the daily Press. 

 During the past two months, in fact, the newspapers have 

 related how men, women and children, many of them suffering 

 from loathsome if not contagious diseases, have visited a veritable 

 middle-age shrine in the city of New York, strong in the hoary 

 superstition that kissing an alleged relic of St. Anne would 

 remove their afflictions. During the same interval a railway 

 circular has been distributed explaining how tourists may wit- 

 ness the Moki snake-dance, that weird ceremony by which the 

 Pueblo Indian seeks to secure rain in his desert ; and a similar 

 public, and officially approved, ceremony has been observed in 

 the heat-stricken State of Missouri. 



Such epochs and episodes of regression as these must be taken 

 into account in making up an estimate of scientific progress. 

 They show us that the slow movement upward in the evolution 

 of man which gives an algebraic sum of a few steps forward per 

 century is not inconsistent with many steps backward. Or, to 

 state the case in another way, the rate of scientific advance is to 

 be measured not so much by the positions gained and held by 

 individuals, as by the positions attained and realised by the 

 masses of our race. The average position of civilised man now 

 is probably below the mean of the positions attained by the 

 naturalist Huxley and the statesman Gladstone, or below the 

 mean of the positions attained by the physicist von Helmholtz 

 and His Holiness the Pope. When measured in this manner, 

 the rate of progress in the past twenty centuries is not altogether 

 flattering or encouraging to us, especially in view of the possi- 

 bility that some of the recently developed sciences may suffer 

 relapses similar to those which so long eclipsed geography and 

 astronomy. 



It must be confessed, therefore, when we look backward over 

 the events of the past two thousand years, and when we consider 

 the scientific contents of the mind of the average denizen of this 

 planet, that it is not wholly rational to entertain millennial 

 anticipations of progress in the immediate future. The fact that 

 some of the prime discoveries of science have so recently ap- 

 peared to many earnest thinkers to threaten the very foundations 

 of society is one which should not be overlooked in these 

 confident times of prosperity. And the equally important fact 

 that entire innocence with respect to the elements of science 

 and dense ignorance with respect to its methods have not been 

 hitherto incompatible with justly esteemed eminence in the 

 divine, the statesman, the jurist, and the man of letters, is one 

 which should be reckoned with in making up any forecast. It 

 may be seriously doubted, indeed, whether the progress of the 

 individual is not essentially limited by the progress of the race. 



But this obverse and darker side of the picture which confronts 

 us from the past has its reverse and brighter side ; and I am 

 constrained to believe that the present status of science and the 

 general enlightenment of humanity justify ardent hopefulness if 

 not sanguine optimism with respect to the future of scientific 

 achievement. The reasons for this hopefulness are numerous : 

 some of them arising out of the commercial and political con- 

 ditions of the world, and others arising out of the conditions of 

 science itself. 



Perhaps the most important of all these reasons is found in 

 the general enlargement of ideas which has come, and is coming, 

 with the extension of trade and commerce to the uttermost 

 parts of the earth. We are no longer citizens of this or that 

 country, simply. Whether we wish it or not we are citizens of 

 the world, with increased opportunities and with increased 

 duties. We may not approve — few men of science would 

 approve, I think— that sort of "expansion" which works 

 " benevolent assimilation " of inferior races by means of a bible 

 in one hand and a gun in the other ; but nothing can help so 

 much, it seems to me, to remove the stumbling blocks in the 

 way of the progress of science as actual contact with the 

 manners, the customs, the relations, and the resulting questions 

 for thought, now thrust upon all civilised nations by the events 

 of the day. That sort of competition which is the life of trade, 

 that sort of rivalry which is the stimulus to national effort, and 

 that sort of cooperation which is essential for mutual protection, 

 all make for the cosmopolitan dissemination of scientific truth 

 and for the appreciation of scientific investigation. I would not 



