February 21, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



289 



no matter how seemingly remote from cur- 

 rent human interests, and from man's daily 

 life, may reasonably cherish a spirit of 

 devotion to the social ideal. In educa- 

 tional circles there is just now great debate 

 over the comparative values of the studies 

 called abstract and those called practical, 

 as constituting a preparation for the duties 

 and responsibilities of "real" life. While 

 admitting the reasonableness of this dis- 

 tinction and the value of certain proposals 

 to alter the disposal of time and attention 

 to be allotted by the average man to the 

 two, we wish now to insist upon the 

 thought that no form of science need be 

 pursued, or ought to be pursued, without 

 regard to the relation in which its pursuit 

 stands to the social ideal. The pursuit of 

 knowledge for knowledge's sake is itself a 

 moral benefit to the normal man. And you 

 can never bring about the social ideal, or 

 advance far toward it, without discipline 

 in the pursuit of knowledge. One of the 

 ideals which science prizes and promotes is 

 the ideal of a society, and finally of a race, 

 which is so disciplined in knowledge that 

 it may know how to be wise and upright in 

 conduct. For, although such discipline is 

 not the whole of what contributes to the 

 moral and religious uplift of the race, with- 

 out such discipline moral and religious 

 progress is impossible for the race. 



Hovering over all like a vast but glorious 

 cloud that is being illumined, through the 

 rising mists, by the rising sun, is the ideal 

 to which the combined work of all the sci- 

 ences is being directed for its better dis- 

 covery and interpretation, the ideal of a 

 universal order which has at its core, and 

 through all its historical evolution, the 

 unity due to rational mind. This concep- 

 tion in its modern outlines has been won 

 by the toil of thousands of observers and 

 thinkers, and slowly expanded and guar- 

 anteed, as it were, by the experience of the 



race. It is confessedly incomplete ; per- 

 haps it will always remain incomplete. 

 For reality itself is no closed and once-for- 

 all finished affair. But that the world is 

 a realization in time and space of some 

 such ideal as science has built up — an ideal 

 unity of order, beauty and meaning — this 

 is the growing conviction upon which the 

 particular sciences, from their different 

 points of view, and by their different 

 methods, have been converging. 



I must ask your further indulgence while 

 I close this paper — already prolonged to an 

 excessive length — in a fashion somewhat 

 sermonesque, i. e., with two practical and 

 hortatory applications. 



This view of man as the measure of all 

 things calls upon those who engage in the 

 scientific study of man, whether from the 

 psychological or the anthropological point 

 of view, for comprehensiveness and catho- 

 licity. All the other sciences are becom- 

 ing more definitely tributary to the study 

 of man. His marvellously complex and 

 delicate organism traces its history through 

 indefinite ages of evolution to an unknown 

 and probably undiscoverable past. The 

 description of this organism requires the 

 combined results of the physico-chemical 

 and biological sciences. What we call his 

 mental and social nature and development 

 enlists the efforts of the whole round of the 

 psychological and historical sciences. But 

 we are not ready for a complete and just 

 estimate of the capacity of man as the 

 measurer of all things until we have 

 studied him as a speaking animal, a being 

 with moral, artistic and religious ideals ; 

 and with a certain limited though genuine 

 capacity for a self-controlled development 

 in pursuit of these ideals. In a word, both 

 psychology and anthropology are under the 

 obligation to extend their studies, in the 

 interests of comprehensiveness and catho- 

 licity, so as the better to understand and 



