94 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LVI, No. 1439 



is obsolete or obsolescent; tbat it will pass 

 away in the light of new scientific knowledge 

 even as the scholastic philosophy was sup- 

 planted by experimental science. Man sud- 

 denly finds himself a bewildered actor in a new 

 drama where he must learn his part all over 

 again on pain of disastrous failure in his ap- 

 pointed role. 



To summarize the preceding reflections : 

 Modern scientific research, in spite of its pro- 

 fessed aloofness and disregard of human feel- 

 ings and motives, has succeeded in unfolding 

 to our gaze so new a world in its origin, devel- 

 opment, workings and possibilities of control 

 in the interests of human welfare that prac- 

 tically all of the older poetic and religious ideas 

 have to be fundamentally revised or reinter- 

 preted. Scientific knowledge ingeniously ap- 

 plied and utilized by inventors and engineers 

 has, with the assistance of business men and 

 financiers, metamorphosed our environment and 

 our relations with our fellow men. Lastly, our 

 notions of our own nature are being so altered 

 that should we discreetly apply our increasing 

 knowledge of the workings of the mind and 

 the feelings a far more successful technique 

 might finally emerge for the regulation of the 

 emotions than any that has hitherto been sug- 

 gested. This is at least an exhilarating hope. 



Now if all this be true we are forced to ask 

 whether it is safe when our life has come to be 

 so profoundly affected by and dependent on 

 scientific knowledge to permit the great mass 

 of mankind and their leaders and teachers to 

 continue to operate on the basis of presupposi- 

 tions and prejudices which owe their respecta- 

 bility and currency to their great age and un- 

 critical character, but which fail to correspond 

 with real things and actual operations as they 

 are coming to be understood. For a great part 

 of our beliefs about man's nature, the rightness 

 and wrongness of his acts date from a time 

 when far less was known of the universe and 

 far different were the conditions and problems 

 of life from those of to-day. Do we not ur- 

 gently need a new type of wonderer and point- 

 er-out whose curiosity shall be excited by this 

 strange and perturbing emergency in which we 

 find ourselves and who shall set himself to dis- 

 cover and indicate to his busv and timid feUow 



creatures a possible way out? Otherwise how 

 is a race so indifferent and even hostile to 

 scientific and historical knowledge of the pre- 

 ciser sort — so susceptible to beliefs that make 

 other and more potent appeals than truth — to 

 be reconciled to stronger drafts of medicinal 

 information which their disease demands but 

 their palates reject? 



IV 



It is this paramount question that I had in 

 mind in preparing this address. I have not 

 the time nor indeed the capacity to make its 

 multiform and ui'gent necessity clear as I 

 should wish. But many of you, I know, have 

 already been thinking of the matter and will 

 concede the necessity and urgency without 

 further argument. Others will have experi- 

 enced a vague anxiety and foreboding about the 

 present state and prospects of scientific ad- 

 vance, and what has been said may help to clear 

 their minds if they do not agree forthwith that 

 the present crisis is of the precise nature and 

 gravity that it seems to me to be. 



Much has been written of the conflict of sci- 

 ence and religion. But this is to narrow down 

 the real problem, which is nothing less than 

 the stupendous task of cultivating an appre- 

 ciation of the nature and signifleance of precise 

 thought and exact knowledge in a being by na- 

 ture and nurture so careless of truth and given 

 to modes of thinking repugnant to scientific 

 intelligence. For even the more magnificent 

 scientific discoveries, especially those of recent 

 years, have not penetrated into our general 

 education and are entirely disregarded in most 

 discussions of social problems. And yet an 

 imposing accumulation of critical information 

 of wide bearing is at our disposal which could 

 become an active factor in the readjustment of 

 the troubled relations of man were it possible 

 to overcome the obstacles to its general dissem- 

 ination and acceptance. 



A striking illustration of the present inef- 

 fective methods of popularizing cardinal scien- 

 tific discoveries has recently been supplied by 

 the revival of a strong and threatening opposi- 

 tion to the knowledge we now have of man's 

 affinity and obvious relationships with the rest 

 of the organic world. The idea of organic 



