ROBERT A. MILLIKAN 35 



every scientist will recognize that Ernst Haeckel was 

 an even purer one. 



If there is anything that is calculated to impart an 

 attitude of humility and of reverence in the face of 

 nature, to keep one receptive of new truth and con- 

 scious of the limitations of our finite understanding, 

 it is a bit of familiarity with the growth of modern 

 physics. It is quite as effective as the "tropic forests" 

 which put Charles Darwin Into such an attitude of 

 reverence when he wrote, "No man can stand in the 

 tropic forests without feeling that they are temples 

 filled with the various productions of the God of na- 

 ture, and that there is more in man than the breath 

 of his body." 



No conception of God which has ever come into 

 human thinking has been half so productive of effort 

 on the part of man to change bad conditions as has 

 this new modern conception that man himself plays a 

 part in the scheme of evolution; this conception that 

 has arisen because of work like that of Galileo, like 

 that of Pasteur, and especially like that of Franklin 

 and Faraday, that it is possible in increasing measure 

 for us to know and to control, nature. This concep- 

 tion has Inevitably been introduced into human think- 

 ing by the stupendous strides which have been made 

 in the past century. And there are perhaps limitless 

 possibilities ahead through the use of the scientific 

 method for the enrichment of life and the develop- 

 ment of the race. 



In this sense the idea that nature is at bottom 

 benevolent has now become well-nigh universal. It is 



