Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/774

752 obedience exists, and the instincts, appetites, and impulses of the lower animals remain in him, or disappear only as reason is adequate to take their place. And in any case there is no alleviation for the woes of life, "save the absolute veracity of action; the resolute facing of the world as it is."

The intense practicality of all this must e recognized. The truths of science are approximate, not absolute. They must be stated in terms of human consciousness, and they can never be dissevered from possible human action. Knowledge which can only accumulate without being woven into conduct has never been a boon to its possessor. As food must be formed into tissue, so must perception go over into action. In the lower forms, we have the devices, chiefly automatic, by which sensation transmitted to the sensorium reappears as motion. In like manner we find in man, besides these reflex transfers, and the reflex connections formed by habit, that science becomes changed to art and knowledge to power. Power and effectiveness are conditioned on accuracy. Every failure in the sense organ, every form of deterioration of the nerves, shows itself in reduction of power. Reduced effectiveness shows itself through the processes of natural selection, as reduction is safety in life. Thus the degeneration of the nervous system through excesses, through precocious activity, or through the effect of stimulants shows itself in untrustworthy perceptions, in uncontrolled muscles, and in the lack of security in life. Incidentally all these are recorded by fall in social standing. With the reduction of the accuracy of recognition of reality the person ceases to hold his place as a man among men.

Similar failure comes with any cause impairing the recognition of the reality of external things. The sober mind is necessary to safety in life. In general all civilized men are well born. They come of good stock. For the lineage of perversity, insanity, and even stupidity is never a long one. The perverse, insane, and the stupid live through the tolerance of others. They can not maintain themselves, and, in spite of charity and the sense of conventionality, the mortality caused by the fool-killer is something enormous. It is an essential element in race progress. It grows with increased civilization, because of increasing complexity of condition. It is the chief compensating influence for the life-saving which has been made possible for scientific research. As Prof. H. H. Powers has said, "There is in civilization not a single vice that race progress can spare." "The fool-killer," Dr. Bailey tells us, "the fool-curer, and the fool-preventer are alike servants of the living God."

The recent "recrudescence of superstition"—a striking accompaniment of an age of science—is in a sense dependent on science.