IN THE NOON OF SCIENCE 



we find it more and more difficult to read books 

 about books, and all writing "about-and-about" 

 we are impatient of. We want the thing itself; we 

 want currents and counter-currents — movement 

 and rapidity at all hazards. 



We are used to seeing the wheels go roxmd; we 

 feel the tremendous push of our civilization aU 

 about us; we see the straight paths, despite ob- 

 stacles, that the controlled physical forces make 

 over the earth's surface; we are masters of the sci- 

 ence of short cuts in all departments of lite; and 

 both literature and philosophy respond to these 

 conditions. Pragmatism has come in, dogmatism 

 has gone out; the formal, the perfunctory, the 

 rhetorical, count for less and less; the direct, the 

 manly, the essential, count for more and more. 

 Science has cured us of many delusions, and it has 

 made us the poorer by dispelling certain illusions, 

 but it has surely made the earth a much more hab- 

 itable place than it was in the prescientific ages. 



