Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/739

 SCIENCE AND CITIZENSHIP 723

proportion she has an educational policy for her child. Policy is but a name for a system of dealing with one's resources for a definite purpose. In short, a policy is a scheme for the develop- ment of potencies in the direction of an ideal realization.

III. What is the relevance of all this for science ? There are two dominant moods or manifestations of science : the cosmic, natural- istic, or geographical mood, on the one hand, and, on the other, the humanist, the historical, the idealist mood. In the former, the cosmic mood, the scientist feels a relatively slight interest in the human race and its doings. There are so many more im- pressive phenomena in the field of observation. Are there not one hundred thousand species of beetles, compared with a single species of man? The entomologist bulks larger in science than the sociologist, simply because the boy is father to the man. The scientist in his cosmic mood is a stereotpyed, a perpetual boy. The curiosity of the boy about the wonders of nature ceases for the moment, when his collection of curiosities fills the last of his pock- ets. But the pockets of the scientist take the form of extensible museums ; and hence the temptation to go on collecting, until the habit determines his life, and in course of time he finds himself unable to feel either the cosmic or the human emotion.

As the boy sometimes grows into the man, the cosmic scientist may grow into the humanist one. He no longer observes the phe- nomena of nature as a mere series of sequences and coexistences following each other in endless succession. He looks upon nature as a reservoir of resources for the use of man. He seeks out the potencies of nature, foresees their possible developments and conceives his ideals of human life in terms of the optimum expression of known potencies. In Bacon's phrase, man controls nature by obeying her. In this respect science is just the ordered and growing knowledge of the ways of nature leading to human evolution. Science, in its pure and applied forms, here stands for the collective resources of the race available for the mainte- nance and advancement of human life. Science is thus in terms of the illustration used above a sort of generalized mother of men, as it were a race-mother. And if the policy and ideals of