538 



SCIENCE. 



LN. S. Vol. I. No. 20. 



everywliere is this scientific method that in 

 a broad sense it might be accorded univei*- 

 sality. It becomes, then, an important 

 matter to discover, if one can, what effects 

 upon the intellectual life, not only of the 

 individual, but of society in general, are re- 

 sulting fromi the method now and will de- 

 velop in the future. 



It is possible to define science as that 

 orderly mass of facts and hypotheses with- 

 in experience by which we criticise our 

 primitive ideas. Social, not merely individ- 

 ual, experience and the broader implication 

 of criticism are intended. The scientific 

 method is therefore that intellectual process 

 by which facts are recognized, accumulated 

 and arranged, hypotheses framed, tested and 

 exploited and conclusions drawn, verified, 

 accepted and applied where they may seem 

 best to fulfil their function in the enginery 

 of social progress. It would be an error to 

 suppose that any clear demarcation exists 

 between knowledge that is scientific and 

 other knowledge that is not ; nor can one, 

 search as he will, discover the birth-place 

 or learn the natal day of the scientific 

 method. As Dr. Osborn has shown, from 

 the Greeks to Darwin there exists a con- 

 tinuity of speculative evolution. Bacon 

 was not the first to make use of induction. 

 Franklin did not discover electricity, nor 

 Lamarck the impermanence of species. 

 Everywhere the older phases of thought 

 merge into the newer, much as one picture 

 seems to follow another in the cunningly pre- 

 sented dissolving views or phantasmagoria 

 of the stage. Yet it will scarcely be gainsaid 

 that while yesterday the scientific method 

 was indeterminate and sporadic, to-day it is 

 definite, characteristic of most that is valu- 

 able in thought and in a sense universal. 



Carrying farther the definitions which 

 are so useful if one desires to make one's 

 meaning plain, it will appear that the intel- 

 lectual life is a concept that has enlarged, 

 imperceptibly at first, but surely during 



these later days. When one sees the phrase 

 in type one does not stop with Hamerton. 

 Insensibly the meaning of the word life has- 

 expanded in the minds of thoughtful men 

 until the limits of individualism are instinc- 

 tively transcended and the instant idea is 

 of the greater social, not of the lesser indi- 

 vidual organism. No more impressive evi- 

 dence of an onward movement in thought 

 could be offered, no more conclusive demon- 

 stration of some welding, humanizing force 

 unconsciously at work generalizing and ex- 

 tending the point of view. The intellectual 

 life is seen to be not merely an efflorescence 

 of culture; it is not the knowing of the best 

 that has been said and written in the his- 

 tory of the world ; it is not the peace of in- 

 trospective calm, nor serenity in a delightful 

 oasis amid the desert sands of a crass and 

 insentient materialism ; it is a strenuous, an 

 austere exertion of those high human powers 

 that command the world of things for the 

 world of thought. Culture, essentially in- 

 dividuaUstic, is not the concretely social 

 and dynamic intellectual Ufe. It is true one 

 must not altogether forget the traditional 

 meaning of the phrase, but that traditional 

 meaning is after all suggestive principally as 

 a vestigial character. Its peculiar interest 

 lies in the fact that it has been outgrown. 



Having indicated the content of such 

 phrases as intellectual life and scientific method, 

 it remains to show briefly how the latter in 

 its slow but massive development has in- 

 fluenced the former, or rather how the two 

 have unfolded themselves in unison. In 

 the course of the examination, it will perhaps 

 become apparent that the lai'ger modern 

 implication of such a phrase as intellectual 

 life is due, above all, to precisely such in- 

 fluences as have been brought to bear upon 

 the textui-e of society by the progressively 

 larger, though in great part unconscious, 

 activity of what has been termed the scien- 

 tific method. 



Noting first the evident contact points, 



