THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



not flourish amid such rank growths), life in this 

 country is undoubtedly the ugliest and most mate- 

 rialistic that any country or age ever saw. Our 

 civilization is the noisiest and most disquieting, and 

 the pressure of the business and industrial spirit the 

 most maddening and killing, that the race has yet 

 experienced. 



Yet for all these things science is only indirectly 

 responsible. In the same sense is the sun responsible 

 for the rains and storms that at times destroy us. 

 The spirit of greed and violence, robust because it 

 has been well-housed and fed, and triply dangerous 

 because it is well-armed and drilled, is abroad in 

 the land. Science gave us dynamite, but whence 

 the spirit that uses it to wreak private revenge, or 

 to blow up railroad bridges and newspaper and 

 manufacturing plants? Let us be just to science. 

 Had it never been, the complexion of our lives and 

 the face of the earth itself would have been vastly 

 different. Had man never attained to the power of 

 reason, he would still have been a brute with the 

 other beasts. It takes power to use power. Knowl- 

 edge without wisdom is a dangerous thing. Science 

 without sense may bring us to grief. We cannot 

 vault into the saddle of the elemental forces and 

 ride them and escape the danger of being ridden by 

 them. We cannot have a civilization propelled by 

 machinery without the iron of it in some form en- 

 tering our souls. 



68 



