HEBER D. CURTIS 61 



gifts. That older and more intolerant science has 

 suffered many a hard knock and disillusionment dur- 

 ing the past two decades, and this forced abandon- 

 ment of tenets formerly taught as inerrant and in- 

 spired has had a most salutary effect. We recall the 

 famous words of the Virginian, when a well-knowr 

 biological impossibility was attributed to his pedigree, 

 — "Stranger, when you call me that, smile." It is not 

 a bad thing that present-day scientists, or at least the 

 older members of the group, have learned to smile a 

 little. 



For we are not quite so cocksure now; we older 

 men in the physical sciences have had to change our 

 creeds several times in the relatively short span cov- 

 ered by our scientific activity, and we now realize that 

 our present theories, while they are the best that we 

 can now derive from existing observational data, may 

 conceivably be changed over night by new experi- 

 mental evidence, or by the analysis of some desk- 

 worker who knows no apparatus, but works in that 

 world of the spirit which we call mathematics. 



Thus it is that we find to-day that both religion and 

 science are relatively chastened and humbled schemes 

 of thought as compared with the autocracy, the self- 

 sufficiency, the self-esteem, and the arrogance which 

 they both have displayed in the centuries past. The 

 pot can not call the kettle black. 



Philosophy, having already made a helpful alliance 

 with mathematical science, is now more and more de- 

 manding notice from the physicist. We are coming to 

 realize that some of the age-old laws of thought are 

 more applicable to physical theory than had formerly 

 been dreamed. Our modern atom apparently does 



