Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/530

520 especially in view of the possibility that some of the more recently developed sciences may suffer relapses similar to those which so long eclipsed geography and astronomy.

It must be confessed, therefore, when we look backward over the events of the past two thousand years, and when we consider the scientific contents of the mind of the average denizen of this planet, that it is not wholly rational to entertain millennial anticipations of progress in the immediate future. The fact that some of the prime discoveries of science have so recently appeared to many earnest thinkers to threaten the very foundations of society is one which should not be overlooked in these confident times of prosperity. And the equally important fact that entire innocence with respect to the elements of science and dense ignorance with respect to its methods, have not been hitherto incompatible with justly esteemed eminence in the divine, the statesman, the jurist and the man of letters, is one which should be reckoned with in making up any forecast. It may be seriously doubted, indeed, whether the progress of the individual is not essentially limited by the progress of the race.

But this obverse and darker side of the picture which confronts us from the past has its reverse and brighter side; and I am constrained to believe that the present status of science and the general enlightenment of humanity justify ardent hopefulness if not sanguine optimism with respect to the future of scientific achievement. The reasons for this hopefulness are numerous; some of them arising out of the commercial and political conditions of the world, and others arising out of the conditions of science itself.

Perhaps the most important of all these reasons is found in the general enlargement of ideas which has come, and is coming, with the extension of trade and commerce to the uttermost parts of the earth. We are no longer citizens of this or that country, simply. Whether we wish it or not we are citizens of the world, with increased opportunities and with increased duties. We may not approve—few men of science would approve, I think—that sort of 'expansion' which works 'benevolent assimilation' of inferior races by means of a bible in one hand and a gun in the other; but nothing can help so much, it seems to me, to remove the stumbling blocks in the way of the progress of science as actual contact with the manners, the customs, the relations and the resulting questions for thought, now thrust upon all civilized nations by the events of the day. That sort of competition which is the life of trade, that sort of rivalry which is the stimulus to national effort, and that sort of cooperation which is essential for mutual protection, all make for the cosmopolitan dissemination of scientific truth and for the appreciation of scientific investigation. I would not