544 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LII. No. 1354 



the people ready for them. The influences 

 which prepare the way for desirable and en- 

 during reforms are not those applied sud- 

 denly, but such as operate day and night, con- 

 tinuously, through long periods of time. The 

 revolutions in Russia, in Mexico, in many 

 parts of Latin America attract our attention, 

 but the really serious misfortunes of those 

 lands lie much deeper, in their bad social, 

 educational, economic conditions, which are 

 operating unfavorably upon their civilizations 

 every day of the year. 



We may well inquire what it is that bears 

 a nation onward and upward to greater things. 

 It is unquestionably the spirit of idealism 

 radiating from its various activities. It is 

 the idealism in commercial life: that part of 

 every man's affairs which is conducted with 

 full respect for the rights of others; that part 

 of every man's business which would not, 

 through its publication, injure his good name. 

 It is the idealism of the transportation sys- 

 tem, which interchanges commodities to mu- 

 tual advantage, and acquaints one section of 

 the world with the good things of other sec- 

 tions. It is idealism in banking, in farm- 

 ing, in the honest day's labor at an honest 

 wage. It is idealism in the intellectual life: 

 reverence for the truth, a desire to know the 

 truth, and to live in harmony with the truth 

 in one's surroundings. 



A pessimist would to-day, as always, receive 

 short shrift, yet I venture to say the world 

 was perhaps never more urgently in need of 

 the biblical advice, "Prove all things; hold 

 fast that which is good." This expression of 

 great wisdom has never been surpassed as a 

 statement of the principles which govern men 

 of science in their search for the truth. 



The chief value of scientific method and 

 accurate knowledge lies not in their worship 

 by the intellectual few, not in their applica- 

 tions to industry, but in their influence upon 

 the daily life of the people. The remarkable 

 advance in civilization within the leading na- 

 tions in recent centuries has been due to the 

 daily and hourly influence of the scientific 

 spirit, more than to any other element. 

 Those nations which possess it are forging 



ahead by leaps and bounds, and those which 

 do not are dropping out of the race. The 

 unscientific nations are threatened vnth ab- 

 sorption by their more scientific neighbors, 

 not so much because they do not invent or 

 perfect the most powerful cannon, the sturd- 

 iest dread-naught, the speediest airplane, or 

 the subtlest submarine, but because the sci- 

 entific nations are forging ahead of them in 

 the arts of peace, in the modes of thought, 

 in the affairs of daily life. The unscientific 

 nations are without serious influence in tbe 

 world, not because they are unwarlike — ^the 

 Turks and essentially all Mohammedans are 

 warlike enough to suit everybody — but be- 

 cause they are lacking in the vision and the 

 efficiency which accompany the scientific 

 spirit.^ 



History affords no more remarkable phe- 

 nomenon than the retrograde movement in 

 civilization which began with the decline of 

 the Roman power and continued through 

 more than a thousand years. There had once 

 existed a wonderful Greek civilization, but 

 for twelve or fifteen centuries it was so nearly 

 suppressed as to be without serious influence 

 upon the life of the European peoples. Greek 

 literature, one of the world's priceless posses- 

 sions, not surpassed by the best modern litera- 

 tures, was as complete two thousand years ago 

 as it is to-day. Yet in the Middle Ages, if 

 we except a few scattered churchmen, it was 

 lost to the European world. A Greek science 

 never existed. Now and then, it is true, a 

 Greek philosopher taught that the earth is 

 round, or that the earth revolves around the 

 sun, or speculated upon the constitution of 

 matter; but excepting the geometry of Euclid 

 and Archimedes, we may say that nothing was 

 proved, and that no serious efforts were made 

 to obtain proofs. There could be no scientific 

 spirit in the Greek nation and Greek civili- 

 zation so long as the Greek religion lived, 

 and the Greek people and government con- 

 sulted and were guided by the oracles. If 

 there had been a Greek science equal in merit 



2 This and the following paragraph have been, 

 taken, with but few changes, from one of my 

 earlier addresses. — ^W. W. C. 



