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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 84. 



tlie social order so silly that educated men 

 will not invest their money in it. There is 

 no medical fraud so shameless that educa- 

 ted men will not give it their certificate. 

 There is no nonsense so unscientific that men 

 called educated will not accept it as science. 

 It should be a function of the schools to 

 build up common sense. Folly should be 

 crowded out of the schools. We have built 

 costly lunatic asylums for its accommoda- 

 tion. That our schools are in a degree re- 

 sponsible for current follies there can be no 

 doubt. We have among us many teachers 

 who have never seen a truth in their lives. 

 There are many who have never felt the 

 impact of an idea. There are many who 

 have lost their own orientation in their 

 youth, and who have never since been able 

 to point out the sunrise to others. It is 

 no extravagance of language to say that 

 diacritical marks lead to the cocoaine habit, 

 nor that the ethics of metaphysics points 

 the way to the higher foolishness. There 

 are many links in the chain of decadence, 

 but its finger posts all point downward. 



" Three roots bear up dominion, knowl- 

 edge, will, the third obedience." This 

 statement which Lowell applies to nations 

 belongs to the individual man as well. It 

 is written in the structure of his brain : 

 Knowledge, Volition, Action ; and all three 

 elements must be sound if action is to be 

 safe or effective. 



But obedience must be active, not passive. 

 The obedience of the lower animals is auto- 

 matic, and therefore in its limits measurably 

 perfect. Lack of obedience means the ex- 

 tinction of the race. Only the obedient sur- 

 vive, and hence comes about obedience to 

 'sealed orders,' obedience by reflex action 

 in which the will takes little part. 



In the early stages of human development 

 the instincts of obedience were dominant. 

 Great among these was the instinct of con- 

 ventionality by which each man follows the 

 path others have found safe. The Church 



and the State, organizations of the strong, 

 have assumed the direction of the weak. 

 It has often resulted that the wiser this 

 direction the greater the weakness it was 

 called on to control. The ' sealed orders ' 

 of human institutions took the place of the 

 automatism of instinct. Against ' sealed 

 orders ' the individual man has been in con- 

 stant protest. The ' Warfare of Science ' 

 was part of this long struggle. The Kefor- 

 mation, the Eevival of Learning, the Growth 

 of Democracy, are all phases of this great 

 conflict. The function of democracy is not 

 good government. If that were all it would 

 not deserve the efforts spent on it. Better 

 government than any king or congress or 

 democracy has yet given could be obtained 

 through the automatic processes of competi- 

 tive examinations. By this we could get 

 along with one-half our number of rulers 

 and at one-fourth the present cost. Even 

 an ordinary intelligence ofl&ce or employ- 

 ment bureau for statesmen would serve us 

 better than we are served by caucus and 

 convention. But not for long. The people 

 who could be ruled in this way would be a 

 people not worth saving. But this is not the 

 point at issue. Government too good as 

 well as too bad may have a baneful influ- 

 ence on men. Its character is a secondary 

 matter. The function of self-government 

 is to intensify individual responsibility, to 

 promote abortive attempts at wisdom, 

 through which true wisdom may come at 

 last. Democracy is a nature study on a 

 grand scale. The Eepublic is a huge labora- 

 tory of civics, a laboratory in which strange 

 experiments are performed, but by which, 

 as in other laboratories, wisdom may arise 

 from experience, and having arisen may 

 work itself out into virtue. 



'* The oldest and best endowed university 

 in the world," Dr. Parkhurst tells us, "is 

 life itself." " Problems tumble easily apart 

 in the field that refuse to give up their 

 secret in the study or even in the closet. 



