Septeiiber 9, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



207 



characteristic mark of humankind? In the 

 scheme of nature, what is the place — the dis- 

 tinctive place— of the human class of life? 



The sovereign importance of that question 

 seems perfectly evident and is thus evident 

 a priori. Have we propounded it to our- 

 selves? In the published thought of recent 

 years I see no sign that we have; if we have, 

 it seems not to have led us to the discovery 

 of anything fundamentally new or funda- 

 mentally important. It is safe to say that 

 we have not asked the question — at all events 

 not seriously. And it seems a bit strange that 

 we have not; for many questions closely con- 

 nected with it and naturally leading to it we 

 have asked. Rudely reminded of the dismal 

 things of human history, we have asked: 

 What is the explanation of them? Can we 

 prevent their recurrence? And, if so, how? 

 Keenly aware of the present plight of the 

 world, we have asked: What is the cause? 

 Are we humans under the dominion of a ma- 

 levolent fate? Or is there a cure? And, if 

 there be a cure, what is the remedy? In try- 

 ing to answer these great questions, we have 

 been led to ask others — questions about eth- 

 ical systems or ethical beliefs, about national 

 or racial philosophies, about education, about 

 industrial methods, about economics, about 

 jurisprudence, political science and theories 

 of government. We have beheld the amazing 

 progress of invention, of natural science, of 

 mathematics, and the technological sciences; 

 we have seen their swift conquests of space, 

 time, and matter ; we have seen our globe thus 

 rapidly reduced to the small dimensions of an 

 ancient province; we have seen many peoples 

 of divers tongues, traditions, customs and 

 institutions consequently constrained to live 

 together as in a single community; we have 

 seen that there is thus demanded a new ethical 

 wisdom, a new legal wisdom, a new educational 

 wisdom, a new economical wisdom, a new in- 

 dustrial wisdom, a new political wisdom, a 

 new wisdom in the afFairs of government; for 

 the new wisdoms our anguished times cry 

 aloud; we have heard the answers — which are 

 in the main but reverberated echoes of the 

 wailing cry mingled with the chattering voices 



of excited public men who know not what to 

 do; knowing that the welfare of the world, 

 since it depends at once upon all the cardinal 

 forms of human activity, demands team-work 

 of them and therefore equal progressiveness 

 in all of them, we have compared the swift 

 advancement of the genviine sciences, on the 

 one hand, with the slow, uncertain, halting 

 pace of the so-called social sciences, on the 

 other; we have been astounded by the 

 contrast; in the crumpled and broken con- 

 dition of our civilization we behold the 

 appalling consequences of the mighty dis- 

 parity; and so we have asked why it is 

 that the social sciences — of ethics, educa- 

 tion, jurisprudence, economics, politics, and 

 government — have lagged so far behind the 

 forward strides in the other great fields of 

 liuman activity that the system of human re- 

 lationships throughout the world has been 

 strained and torn asunder like an immense 

 network of wire rent by a cyclone. This very 

 important question has led to some curious re- 

 sults. It has led to the invention of doctrines 

 that alarm, to proposals that startle, — doc- 

 trines and proposals that we are wont to call 

 radical, revolutionary, red. Is it true that our 

 thinking has been too radical? The trouble 

 is that, in the proper sense of that much abused 

 term, our thinking has not been radical 

 enough. Our questionings have been eager 

 and wide-ranging but our thought has been 

 shallow; it has been emotional and it has been 

 daring but it has not been deep. We have 

 indeed known that the character and status 

 of the so-called human or social sciences de- 

 pend upon what man is; but we have not 

 reflected upon the fact that they depend also, 

 in equal or greater measure, upon what we 

 humans ihinh man is. The fact of this funda- 

 mental dependence, had we considered it, 

 would have led us to a further reflection — it 

 would have led us to wonder whether the 

 backwardness, the mediffival-mindedness, the 

 disastrous lagging of the social sciences may 

 not be due to their having at their base or in 

 their heart a fundamentally false conception 

 or false conceptions of what is really charac- 

 teristic of humankind. It is evident that, if 



