August 24, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



285 



that certain ones may be used to produce 

 certain results, we prescribe them as essen- 

 tial to the process, without taking into ac- 

 count the possibility that other subjects 

 may produce similar results. 



In religion, we are in danger of formulat- 

 ing some specific line of conduct as essential 

 to the result, and of condemning those who 

 do not adhere to it. This is the essence of 

 formalism, and its logical outcome, un- 

 checked by common sense, is illustrated 

 by the final expression of Jewish temple 

 worship. 



That there may be many lines of approach 

 to a given result, if that result be a general 

 condition, is a bard lesson for mankind to 

 learn. 



If it is so difiicult to get at the real fac- 

 tors of a simple result in the laboratory, 

 and still more difficult to interpret the sig- 

 nificance of factors when found, in what 

 condition must we be in reference to the 

 immensely more difiicult and subtle prob- 

 lems which confront us in social organiza- 

 tion, government, education, and religion, 

 especially when it is added that the vast 

 majority of those who have offered answers 

 to these problems have had no conception 

 of the difiiculties involved in reaching abso- 

 lute truth. It is evident that in the vast 

 problems which concern human welfare in 

 general we are but groping our way, and 

 that our answers as yet are largely empir- 

 ical. The proper effect of such knowledge 

 is not despair, but a receptive mind. In my 

 judgment, therefore, the diffusion of the sci- 

 entific spirit will make it more and more 

 difficult for any one with a nostrum to get a 

 hearing. 



The prevailing belief among the untrained 

 is that any result may be explained by some 

 single factor operating as a cause. They 

 seem to have no conception of the fact that 

 the cause of every result is made up of a 

 combination of interacting factors, often in 

 numbers and combinations that are abso- 



lutely bewildering to contemplate. An en- 

 thusiast discovers some one thing which he 

 regards and perhaps all unprejudiced and 

 right-thinking people regard as an evil in 

 society or in government, and straightway 

 this explains for him the whole of our pres- 

 ent unhappy condition. This particular 

 tare must be rooted up, and rooted up im- 

 mediately, without any thought as to the 

 possible destruction of the plants we must 

 cultivate. The abnormal tissue must be 

 destroyed without reference to the fact that 

 the method of destruction may debilitate 

 the normal tissue. 



This habit of considering but one factor, 

 when perhaps scores are involved, indicates 

 a very primitive and untrained condition of 

 mind. In the youth of science it often 

 threw its votaries into hostile camps, each 

 proclaiming rival factors ; when the prob- 

 lem really demands all the factors they all 

 had and many more besides. 



It is fortunate when the leaders of public 

 sentiment have got hold of one real fac- 

 tor. They may overdo it, and work damage 

 by insisting upon some special form of action 

 on account of it, but so far as it goes it is 

 truth. It is more apt to be the case, how- 

 ever, that the factor claimed holds no rela- 

 tion whatsoever to the result. This is where 

 political demagoguery gets in its most un- 

 righteous work, and preys upon the gulli- 

 bility of the untrained, and is the soil in 

 which the noxious weeds of destructive 

 socialism, charlatanism, and religious cant 

 flourish. 



It is needless for me to enlarge the horizon 

 of illustration, by including numerous fields 

 of human thought and activity, for your 

 own thought outruns my statement, and 

 recognizes the conditions in every direction. 

 It is to such blindness that scientific training 

 is slowly bringing a little glimmer of light, 

 and when the world one day really opens 

 its eyes, and it is well if it opens them grad- 

 ually, the old things will have passed away. 



