Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/471

Rh the other races of the world everything which they could contribute worthy of our acceptance.

Modern culture, therefore, stands as the product of all mental endeavor for all time. It may, then, be safely assumed that the study of that which has made civilization, and is civilization in its highest form, and which is the result of all the training of all the world, must itself furnish the best subject-matter for training that human ingenuity can devise.

Scientific education is aesthetic training. To purblind ignorance the beauties of the world are dimly seem, but the glory of the universe is revealed by science. Classic poetry was the best literary product of its time, because it was informed by the philosophy of its time. Its philosophy was chiefly mythology, and the characters of ancient poetry are mythic heroes and gods. So the highest literature of the new civilization must be informed by its highest philosophy; it must be instinct with that knowledge of the universe which is now the glory of the scholars of the world. The splendors of the heavens and the earth, as known to modern science, have put in eclipse the dull glories of ancient mythology.

Scientific education is a training in mental integrity. All along the history of culture from savagery to modern civilization men have imagined what ought to be, and then have tried to prove it true. This is the very spirit of metaphysic philosophy. When the imagination is not disciplined by unrelenting facts, it invents falsehood, and, when error has thus been invented, the heavens and the earth are ransacked for its proof. Most of the literature of the past is a vast assemblage of arguments in support of error. In science nothing can be permanently accepted but that which is true, and whatever is accepted as true is challenged again and again. It is an axiom in science that no truth can be so sacred that it may not be questioned. When that which has been accepted as true has the least doubt thrown upon it, scientific men at once re-examine the subject. No opinion is sacred. "It ought to be" is never heard in scientific circles. "It seems to be" and "we think it is" is the modest language of scientific literature.

In science all apparently conflicting facts are marshaled, all doubts are weighed, all sources of error are examined, and the most refined determination is given with the "probable error." A guard is set upon the bias of enthusiasm, the bias of previous statement, and the bias of hoped-for discovery, that they may not lead astray. So, while scientific research is a training in observation and reasoning, it is also a training in integrity.

Scientific training is an education in charity. Sympathy for the suffering of others is at the basis of eleemosynary charity, and it has grown with the development of social interdependence. The charity that was born in the family in primitive times, with the growth of the tribe into the nation, has developed into national charity, and finally,