SCIENCE AS A FACTOR OF HUMAN EXPANSION 497 



solar heat, result.^ Thus, in physico-chemistry, as in astronomy 

 and biology, we stand to-day at a point undreamed of forty years 

 ago. And in the abstract sciences, such as mathematics and logic ; 

 in the concrete sciences, such as geology and psychology ; in the 

 abstract-concrete science of sociology, in all its branches, whether 

 ethnology or criminology, political economy or the history of 

 religions, jurisprudence or statistical science, the progress is 

 the same. Macaulay's words are as applicable to theoretical 

 science as to apphed science : "A point which yesterday was 

 imseen is its goal to-day, and will be its starting-point to-morrow." 

 It is thus evident that science constitutes one of the highest 

 forms of the expansion of the human intellect ; for aU the steps 

 which we have enumerated in the progress of science are hke- 

 wise steps in the progress of human expansion. The conquests 

 of the human intellect become ever more and more complete ; 

 their sphere widens more and more every year ; and this imphes 

 a widening of the sphere of human exrpansion, and, at the same 

 time, of the sphere of conflict. For the more the intellect 

 expands, the more secrets of the universe science reveals, the 

 greater is the tendency of those traditions which formerly con- 

 stituted our intellectual inheritance, to be weakened ; and, as 

 we have said, by coming into conflict with these traditions, 

 science causes disagreement ; it thus stimulates thought, and 

 creates new sources of energy for further human expansion. 



Science thus responds fully to the first condition of a social 

 force ; it not only allows, but it stimulates and develops, that 

 expansion which is the primordial law of all Ufe, and which is 

 the first condition of progress. But does science respond to the 

 second condition we have insisted on ? Does it, while developing 

 the expansive power of hfe, at the same time increase its value ? 



1 For a lucid exposition and discussion of the new theory of matter 

 see L' Evolution de la Mature, by Dr. Gustave Le Bon (Paris, Flammarion, 

 1905). Mr. A. J. Balfour has also discussed the question in his Presidential 

 Address to the British Association at Cambridge, August, 1904. See also 

 Professor R. K. Duncan's New Knowledge, 1905. 



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