842 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1146 



directed it must be admitted that " side by side 

 with great advances in material prosperity 

 due largely to the applications of science there 

 has been a vast deterioration of character," as 

 Lord Cromer expressed it. 



Indeed Lord Cromer applied his statement 

 particularly to the Germans, but the deteriora- 

 tion of character, which has shown itself 

 chiefly in the misuse of wealth and opportu- 

 nity, is by no means confined to the Germans. 

 In some respects, indeed, it would seem that 

 the English and our own Americans have 

 sinned more than the Germans. 



Lord Haldane and all champions of science 

 teaching should understand that most of the 

 unfriendliness towards science is a hatred of 

 material worship; and Lord Cromer and Vis- 

 count Bryce should understand that in their 

 opposition to the extension of science teaching 

 they are misdirecting their hatred of idolatry, 

 and placing themselves in exactly the position 

 of the hand spinners when they opposed the 

 introduction of improved machinery years ago. 

 It is now as much of a mistake to oppose the 

 fullest and widest possible development of 

 finding out and learning how as it was years 

 ago to oppose labor-saving machinery; only 

 it is quite necessary to make readjustments 

 for the conservation of character and morals. 

 Indeed this necessity has shown itself most 

 distinctly in our reluctance to make just such 

 readjustments among those whose labor has 

 been so wonderfully " saved " by machinery ! 



In the early days at the University of Kan- 

 sas (where one of us graduated thirty years 

 ago) when the crudities of pioneer living were 

 still very much in evidence the question was 

 frequently raised among the young men of 

 the faculty who had come from older commu- 

 nities in the east " Can the finer aspects of 

 civilization, literature and the fine arts, ever 

 flourish in this prairie country ? " And a 

 smaller faculty group, sensitized by the raw 

 conditions, were very much alive to the ques- 

 tion which has been fought over in every col- 

 lege " This new thing, science, what menace 

 does it hold for literature and the fine arts ? " 

 Let one consider what must have been the state 



of mind of an immigrant group of intellectuals 

 in grasshopper times in Kansas ! 



Nothing, perhaps, is farther from the ideals 

 and methods of the mathematical sciences than 

 literature and music and painting and sculp- 

 ture, and yet many of our greatest scientists 

 and engineers have held the artistic tempera- 

 ment to be the most important qualification for 

 the investigator or builder. It certainly is not 

 foolish, at any rate, to consider seriously the 

 unfriendliness towards science teaching among 

 those whose work is more closely connected 

 with human things. Lord Cromer and Vis- 

 count Bryce no doubt agree with Woodrow 

 Wilson in having no indictment against sci- 

 ence itself, but they seem somehow to be un- 

 friendly towards science teaching. 



Da wird der Geist Euch wohl dressirt 

 In spanisehe Stiefeln eingeschnuert. 



Indeed there is a phase of science teaching 

 for which there is an unfriendly feeling among 

 those whose work is closely connected with 

 experimental science and engineering, namely, 

 formal mathematics teaching, and nothing has 

 ever been said which can be more justly ap- 

 plied in criticism of our conventional courses 

 in mathematics than the following criticism 

 of conventionalized art. The criticism is ex- 

 pressed in terms of the contrast between the 

 two paths of art and it is illustrated by ex- 

 amples chosen from early barbarisms. 



The substitution of conventionalism for sym- 

 pathy with observed life is the first eharaeteristie 

 of the hopeless work of all ages, and it is emi- 



EiG. 1. An angel of the eighth century. The 

 beginnings of art in England. 



nently manifested in the accompanying picture of 

 an angel from a psalter of the eighth century 

 which is to be found in the library of St. John's 

 College, Cambridge. This angel is a barbarism 



