Septembee 19, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



381 



only a single word in each ease so as to 

 emphasize the necessary brevity and in- 

 sufficiency of the reference. 



In physiology the conflict ranges round 

 vitalism. (My immediate predecessor 

 dealt with the subject at Dundee.) 

 In chemistry the debate concerns atomic 

 structure. (My penultimate prede- 

 cessor is well aware of pugnacity in 

 that region.) 

 In biology the dispute is on the laws of 

 inheritance. (My successor is sure to 

 deal with this subject; probably in a 

 way not deficient in liveliness.) 

 And besides these major controversies, 

 debate is active in other sections : 



In education, curricula generally are 

 being overhauled or fundamentally 

 criticized, and revolutionary ideas are 

 promulgated concerning the advan- 

 tages of freedom for infants. 

 In economic and political science, or 

 sociology, what is there that is not 

 under discussion? Not property 

 alone, nor land alone, but everything, 

 — back to the garden of Eden and the 

 interrelations of men and women. 

 Lastly, in the vast group of mathemat- 

 ical and physical sciences, "slurred 

 over rather than summed up as Sec- 

 tion A," present-day scepticism con- 

 cerns what, if I had to express it in 

 one word, I should call continuity. 

 The full meaning of this term will 

 hardly be intelligible without expla- 

 nation, and I shall discuss it presently. 

 Still more fundamental and deep-rooted 

 than any of these sectional debates, how- 

 ever, a critical examination of scientific 

 foundations generally is going on; and a 

 kind of philosophic scepticism is in the as- 

 cendant, resulting in a mistrust of purely 

 intellectual processes and in a recognition 

 of the limited scope of science. 

 For science is undoubtedly an affair of 



the intellect, it examines everything in the 

 cold light of reason; and that is its 

 strength. It is a commonplace to say that 

 science must have no likes or dislikes, 

 must aim only at truth; or as Bertrand 

 Russell well puts it : 



The kernel of the scientific outlook is the refusal 

 to regard our own desires, tastes and interests as 

 affording a key to the understanding of the world. 



This exclusive single-eyed attitude of 

 science is its strength; but, if pressed be- 

 yond the positive region of usefulness into 

 a field of dogmatic negation and philoso- 

 phizing, it becomes also its weakness. For 

 the nature of man is a large thing, and in- 

 tellect is only a part of it: a recent part 

 too, which therefore necessarily, though not 

 consciously, suffers from some of the de- 

 fects of newness and crudity, and should 

 refrain from imagining itself the whole — 

 perhaps it is not even the best part — of 

 human nature. 



The fact is that some of the best things 

 are, by abstraction, excluded from science, 

 though not from literature and poetry; 

 hence perhaps an ancient mistrust or dis- 

 like of science, typified by the Promethean 

 legend. Science is systematized and met- 

 rical knowledge, and in regions where 

 measurement can not be applied it has 

 small scope; or, as Mr. Balfour said the 

 other day at the opening of a new wing of 

 the National Physical Laboratory: 



Science depends on measurement, and things not 

 measurable are therefore excluded, or tend to be 

 excluded, from its attention. But life and beauty 

 and happiness are not measurable. 



And then characteristically he adds: 



If there could be a unit of happiness, politics 

 might begin to be scientific. 



Emotion and intuition and instinct are 

 immensely older than science, and in a 

 comprehensive survey of existence they 

 can not be ignored. Scientific men may 



