572 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. A^OL. XLVII. No. 1224 



for not having taken the public sufficiently 

 into our confidence. If it is our belief that 

 science has emancipated the spirit of man 

 by freeing it from ignorance and supersti- 

 tion, and in so doing has brought advan- 

 tages in excess of the material comforts 

 which are the more obvious fruits of scien- 

 tific progress, it is time we laid more empha- 

 sis upon these intangible values. For by 

 these we live and work, rather than by the 

 desires of a sordid materialism. 



1. materluj comfort and spiritual 

 progress 



Betterment of his material surroundings 

 reaches beyond man's physical comfort; 

 for such betterment enables him to fix his 

 attention upon "that which is not bread." 

 We reach the heights now and then from 

 the flood of difficulties which surrounds 

 us ; and there may be all the more satisfac- 

 tion in this, when we do so in spite of ad- 

 verse conditions, when we will not be 

 wholly fettered by mere circumstance. 

 Yet for sustained achievement in nation or 

 individual there must be relief from an op- 

 pressive struggle for existence. What H. 

 G, Wells- has termed "this misery of 

 boots" must be overcome before we can 

 realize our spiritual desires. Those who 

 have lived as the favored members of so- 

 ciety may prate of their superiority over 

 material things; but one suspects that a 

 sojourn in a New York tenement or a 

 Pittsburgh slum would convince any one of 

 us that he owes much of what he has ac- 

 complished to the stability of his material 

 foundations, and to the absence of acute 

 pressure in matters of food and shelter. 

 Some of us call ourselves poor, compara- 

 tively speaking; but we have frequent re- 

 lief from toil and much of our toil has al- 



^ Wells, H. G., "Thia Misery of Boots," Ball 

 Publishing Co., Boston, 1908. 



ways been self-imposed. On the other 

 hand, conditions that are too easy are not 

 conducive to spiritual progress; for we are 

 not yet far enoiigh removed from the state 

 of nature, under which we took origin, to 

 react favorably in the absence of stimula- 

 tion. The proposal to fill men's stomachs 

 as a stimulus to their morals is worth con- 

 sidering, even though history and experi- 

 ence show that the hardest thing for man 

 or nation to thrive upon is material pros- 

 perity. A fair degree of prosperity is in- 

 dispensable, though excess may prove dis- 

 astrous. 



Now one of the things science has done 

 is to establish our prosperity. In civilized 

 lands, we can be sure of enough for the en- 

 tire population to eat and of enough to 

 wear. The problem is no longer how to 

 produce the necessities of life so much as 

 how to distribute them. In matters of pro- 

 duction we are far ahead of our power to 

 effect a just distribution. The socialists 

 are right in their contention, that if we 

 would deal fairly in distribution no man 

 would be obliged to work more than four 

 or five hours a day and that each could de- 

 vote the remaining time to his spiritual in- 

 terests, that under such a system many of 

 our social problems would disappear. Our 

 first claim for science, as having spiritual 

 value, is, therefore, its establishment of the 

 material foundations upon which spiritual 

 advancement rests. While this value 

 should not be minimized, since it lies at the 

 basis of civilized life, it is easy to cite other 

 values not so immediately allied to things 

 material. 



2. SCIENCE AND IMAGINATION 



We often hear it said that, since science 

 has destroyed the mystery of the universe, 

 nothing remains for imagination. This 

 statement has, I think, no basis in fact, and 



