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SCIENCE 



[Vol. LVI, No. 1439 



routine or failed altogether to notice. These 

 mind-makers are the questioners and seers. We 

 classify them roughly as poets, religious lead- 

 ers, moralists, story-tellers, philosophers, the- 

 ologians, artists, scientists, inventors. They all 

 are discoverers and pointers-out. What eludes 

 the attention of others catches theirs. They 

 form the noble band of wonderers. Commonly 

 unnoticed things excite a strange and com- 

 pelling curiosity in them, and each new ques- 

 tion sets them on a new quest. They see 

 where others are blind, they hear where others 

 are deaf. They point out profundities, com- 

 plexities, involutions, analogies, differences and 

 dependencies where everything had seemed as 

 plain as a pike staff. 



In short, poets, philosophers, religious 

 geniuses, artists and scientists are all rare 

 variants of the human species, who emerge here 

 and there through the ages. Sometimes they 

 make a wide appeal to their fellow men; often 

 they stir their resentment or horror; most fre- 

 quently they suffer neglect and contempt. A 

 discovery to which no one listens is obviously 

 of little or no importance. It is a mere private 

 gratification which concerns only the discoverer 

 himself. So the gi-eat question arises as to 

 what determines the success of a new idea; 

 what establishes its currency and gives it a 

 social significance by securing its victory over 

 ignorance and indifference or over older rival 

 and conflicting beliefs? 



To be accepted by the multitude of non- 

 discoverers an idea must obviously be attractive 

 to them in some way or other. And what are 

 the kinds of attractiveness which promote the 

 wide dissemination and the firm and prolonged 

 acceptance of beliefs? This is a difficult ques- 

 tion, and I do not flatter myself that I can 

 answer it very satisfactorily. I take it that the 

 new idea must seem "good," and mayhap noble, 

 beautiful and useful, and that it must fit in 

 pretty well with existing notions; or at least 

 must not threaten violentlj' to dislocate the 

 accepted scheme of things. If it is ugly, 

 wicked, discouraging, humiliating or seriously 

 disturbing to the received plan of life it is 

 likely to be shown the door. Ideas like kisses 

 go by favor. The truth of the new idea pro- 

 posed for acceptance plays an altogether sec- 



ondary role. We rank the Good, True and 

 Beautiful together but it is shocking to ob- 

 serve how little does the success of a new ob- 

 servation depend upon its scientific or his- 

 torical credentials. In almost all we hear, 

 read, say and come to believe, truth, in the 

 scientific sense of the term, is a matter of 

 almost complete indifference. It is irrelevant 

 and may seem an impudent intruder and mar- 

 plot. We often naively use the word "feel" 

 for "believe," and even the word "believe" 

 means to cling to something dear and precious, 

 and good in our sight — to accept what we like 

 to accept. And the wonder grows that there 

 ever appeared in this world of ours a group of 

 men like those here assembled so eccentric as 

 to regard truth as the paramount issue. 



If we make an exception of certain homely 

 matters of fact which have underlain the de- 

 velopment and practice of the industrial arts, 

 mankind has until very recently been nurtured 

 in the main on beliefs that were not submitted 

 to any rigorous test of scientific or historical 

 criticism, and which for the most part would 

 not have been able to withstand careful scru- 

 tiny. But it would be a grave mistake to as- 

 sume that what from a modern scientific stand- 

 point are myths, poetic fancies and gross mis- 

 apprehensions have not played an all-essential 

 part in the building up of the human mind. 

 Man's beliefs had inevitably in the first instance 

 to be what suited him and what he naturally 

 and easily grasped and clung to. For it is not 

 the precise truth of an idea, as we have seen, 

 that leads to its wide acceptance but its ap- 

 peal; its congeniality to a being of the nature 

 and setting of man. There had to be a vast 

 widening of the primitive imagination and vo- 

 cabulary, and innumerable guesses about real 

 and imaginary things before a phenomenon so 

 strange as modern science could emerge. Log- 

 ical definition and speculation can operate quite 

 as well — indeed better on unreal presupposi- 

 tions than on experimentally verifiable ones. 

 Among the wonderers and pointers-out the 

 poet, who "fancy light from Fancy caught," 

 whose "thought leapt out to wed with thought," 

 has always been surest of a large audience. 

 For songs, heroic tales and rhapsodies can be 

 attuned to the heart's desire — they are magic 



