June 25, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



925 



out from all but waste materials. A multi- 

 tude of other discoveries of practical value 

 might be referred to. 



Not so long ago, when scientific research 

 was spoken of, the cry was always, Cui bono? 

 What's the good of it all? Now, no one 

 has the patience to listen to a recital of the 

 benefits accruing to mankind from its 

 operation; for all the achievements I have 

 referred to are not the work of mere in- 

 ventors, but primarily the outcome of scien- 

 tific discovery: thus our modern command 

 of electricity is very largely traceable to 

 the labors of the great philosopher Faraday, 

 who worked in an ill-lighted and cramped 

 laboratory in the Eoyal Institution in 

 Albemarle Street, London, with no other 

 object than that of contributing to the ad- 

 vancement of knowledge. 



Perhaps the greatest of all the scientific 

 achievements of our time remains to be 

 mentioned — the promulgation of the doe- 

 trine of evolution by Charles Darwin. Few, 

 perhaps, can realize what this means for 

 mankind, the intellectual advance it con- 

 stitutes — that through it we have at last 

 acquired full intellectual freedom and the 

 belief that it rests with ourselves alone 

 rightly to order our lives; that by it all 

 dogmas have been undermined. 



Science is come into being and has pros- 

 pered only since freedom of thought was 

 secured : on no other terms can it be. It is 

 well that we should bear this in mind. The 

 growth of numbers and of democracy may 

 well involve a restriction of freedom in 

 all directions — none are so intolerant as 

 the ignorant. 



If in science, to-day, we have something 

 unknown to former civilizations, what is its 

 influence to be on the future of the world, 

 in particular on the future of the white 

 people? If we are not to suffer the rise 

 and fall which all previous civilizations 

 have passed through — rather let me say, if 



the period of our fall is to be retarded 

 beyond the period our forerunners enjoyed, 

 it will be solely because we wield and use 

 the powers science has put into our hands : 

 not so much those of abstract science, but 

 the broad wisdom which the proper culti- 

 vation of science should confer ; hence it is 

 that I desire to urge the absolute impor- 

 tance of giving, through science, a place to 

 the cultivation of wisdom in the state and 

 therefore in education. 



Clearly, two new forces are at work in 

 the world: not science alone, but also a 

 broad and altruistic socialism, both the 

 outcome of the intellectual freedom man 

 has acquired since the deposition of the 

 churches. The one is gradually leading us 

 to base our actions upon knowledge and to 

 be practical through the use of theory; the 

 other is leading us gradually, though slowly, 

 to have consideration for one another, to 

 recognize how helpless are the majority, 

 how greatly they stand in need of the 

 guidance of the few who are capable of 

 leading. But we shall need to order our 

 socialism by science to make it a wise 

 socialism. The signs are only too numer- 

 ous that a wave of political despotism may 

 come over us. Either, as time goes on, sci- 

 ence will be more and more of service in 

 guiding the social machine — or that ma- 

 chine will perish, from the very complexity 

 of its organization and the inability of the 

 units to understand their place, to under- 

 stand the need of subordinating their indi- 

 vidual inclinations to communal interests; 

 most important of all, to understand their 

 inability to recognize and require compe- 

 tent leadership — for science is aristocratic 

 in its tendencies : indeed, I shall claim that 

 real science — wisdom — is for the very few. 



"With all the marvelous growth of 

 achievement to which I have referred, there 

 has been no proportionate growth of public 

 intelligence. Our admiralty, and to a far 



