December 15, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



841 



will come the time of fullness of the devel- 

 opment of applied science. 



Mathematics has been a well-nigh indis- 

 pensable tool in the development of the nat- 

 ural sciences and their applications. On 

 the other hand the natural sciences and 

 particular problems set by science have 

 challenged the ability of mathematicians 

 and spurred them on to the achievement 

 of larger results in pure mathematics. 

 Whoever can strike this flint of mathe- 

 matics upon the steel of natural science and 

 produce fire is doing the world service. 

 The oftener fire is produced the greater 

 will be the development of both mathe- 

 matics and natural science. 



Thos. E. Mason 



Purdue University 



EDUCATION AFTER THE WAR 



The sharp debate on the place of science in 

 education which took place recently in the 

 House of Lords between Lord Haldane on the 

 one side and Lord Cromer and Viscount Bryce 

 on the other side is an example of the kind of 

 misunderstanding which it is necessary to 

 eliminate if we here in the United States and 

 you in England are to act wisely in the matter 

 of education after the war. 



In his sesquicentennial address at Princeton 

 University nineteen years ago Woodrow Wil- 

 son said that if he was not mistaken the 

 " scientific spirit " of the age is doing us a 

 great disservice, working in us a certain great 

 degeneracy; and yet he said that he had no 

 indictment against science itself, but only a 

 warning to utter against the atmosphere which 

 has stolen from our laboratories and lecture 

 rooms and into the general air of the world at 

 large. It is a noxious intoxicating gas which 

 has somehow got into the lungs of the rest of 

 us, a gas which it would seem forms only in 

 the outer air. 



Now it is not easy even for one of Dr. Wil- 

 son's training to express himself with perfect 

 clearness in a matter of this kind; and al- 

 though we are in full sympathy with what we 

 understand Dr. Wilson's point of view to be, 



we do not like his use of the term " scientific 

 spirit." The true scientific spirit, the spirit of 

 such men as Kelvin and Helmholtz, is beyond 

 criticism; but the great things such men have 

 done have brought upon us the most distress- 

 ing and stupid form of idolatry the world has 

 ever seen, and the men who have the true 

 scientific spirit are the only men, as a rule, 

 who are free from it. 



Science is finding out and learning how, 

 whereas most people think of science only in 

 terms of its material results. These results 

 have indeed fascinated the crowd, and the great 

 majority of men have adopted a scale of physi- 

 cal values for everything in life " with a con- 

 sequent neglect of quality and a denial of 

 human value in everything. We have a phi- 

 losophy of rectangular beatitudes and spherical 

 benevolences, a theology of universal indul- 

 gence, a jurisprudence which will hang no 

 rogues; all of which means, in the root, in- 

 capacity of discerning worth and unworth in 

 anything and least of all in man. Whereas, 

 nature and heaven command us, at our peril, 

 to discern worth from unworth in everything 

 and most of all in man." 



" Our real problem now, as always, is ' Who 

 is best man ? ' and the fates forgive much — 

 forgive the wildest, fiercest and crudest ex- 

 periments — if fairly made in the settling of 

 that question. Theft and blood-guiltiness are 

 not pleasing in their sight, and yet the favoring 

 powers of the spiritual and material worlds 

 will confirm to you your stolen goods, and 

 their noblest voices applaud the lifting of your 

 spear and rehearse the sculpture of your shield, 

 if only your robbing and slaying have been 

 done in fair arbitrament of that question ' Who 

 is best man ? ' But if you refuse such inquiry 

 you will come at last to face the same question 

 wrong side upwards, and your robbing and 

 slaying must then be done to find out ' Who 

 is worst man ? ' which in so wide an order of 

 inverted merit is indeed not easy." 



This impassioned statement of a great Eng- 

 lish writer and moralist seems to us to touch 

 the essence of all unfriendliness towards the 

 sciences among seriously thoughtful men, and 

 although this unfriendliness is largely mis- 



