82 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



If there is no plan or purpose in the universe or in 

 human life, if extinction is the goal toward which we 

 as individuals and a race are inevitably driven, one 

 may well say, "What is the use of efforts for improve- 

 ment of the individual or the race? What is the use 

 of education, eugenics, ethics, religion? What is the 

 use of science, of discovery, of invention? What is 

 the use of anything? Nothing." Utter pessimism is 

 the outcome of such beliefs, and Nirvana is the only 

 boon. 



It is impossible to live such a philosophy of nega- 

 tion, a philosophy of despair and suicide, rather than 

 of hope and life. Surely there must be something 

 wrong with any philosophy that cannot be lived. It 

 may be logical but it is not inevitable. After all, logic 

 is not an infallible guide to truth; and carrying a 

 process of thought to its "logical conclusion" has often 

 ended in evident absurdities. The logic of events is a 

 better guide to truth than the logic of syllogisms. 

 There is at least some truth in the contrast between 

 physics and metaphysics made by the late Professor 

 Rowland. "In metaphysics," he said, "when a man 

 has constructed in thought a logical and unified system, 

 he publishes it as his system of philosophy, but in 

 physics after one has formulated his logical system he 

 tries it out in the laboratory and nine times out of 

 ten finds that it Is not true." In science the test of 

 truth Is not logic but appeal to fact, and similarly In 

 philosophy and religion the practical test of truth Is 

 not logic but livablllty. Surely there must be some- 

 thing wrong with a philosophy that ends only In a 

 slough of despond. Surely Inevitable and universal 



