ROBERT A. MILLIKAN 33 



other, the red mob, the devotees of the next easiest 

 and cheapest philosophy, "the philosophy of knock." 

 The unthinking join each of these two groups in 

 crowds. But the man of education and Intelligence in 

 general joins neither. Indeed, is not the main pur- 

 pose of education to enable one to know the truth of 

 the present, and to understand the truth of the past. 

 In a word, is It not to enable one to estimate correctly 

 his own place and that of his contemporaries in the 

 ever-expanding ocean of knowledge; for only with 

 such understanding can he shake off the inhibitions of 

 the conventional, free himself from the emotional 

 futility of the radical, and put forth constructive effort 

 for the real betterment of the world. 



One or two Illustrations of effort that is not con- 

 structive will be illuminating. After the discovery of 

 the law of gravitation all attempts to make new phys- 

 ical or engineering developments, save such as are con- 

 sistent with and limited by this law, became, of course, 

 ridiculous, since they Ignore fundamental and estab- 

 lished truth. The same is true with respect to pro- 

 posed violations of the principle of conservation of 

 energy and the laws of electrodynamics as applied to 

 large-scale phenomena. But this ridiculousness does 

 not prevent inventors without background from con- 

 tinually putting forward perpetual motion machines, 

 nor does it prevent ignorant or unscrupulous persons 

 from advertising Abrams electronic reactions, mag- 

 netic belts, and the like. 



Also such persons undoubtedly have their exact 

 counterparts In the fields of art, finance, education, 

 and all other departments of human activity, persons 

 who are ignorant of fundamental laws that have been 



