Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/532

522 And, on the other hand, the grave doubts entertained by the distinguished men of science a few decades ago as to the permeability and ready response of modern society to that influx of new ideas, have likewise not been realized. It is true that we still sometimes read of theological tests being applied to teachers of biology, and hear, occasionally, of an earnest search for a good methodist or a good presbyterian mathematician; but such cases may be left for settlement out of court by means of the arbitration of our sense of humor. It seems not unlikely, also, that there may persist, for a long time to come, a more or less guerrilla 'warfare of science' with our friends the dogmatists and humanists. Some consider this conflict to be, in the nature of things, irrepressible. But I think we may hope, if we may not confidently expect, that the collisions of the future will occur more manifestly than they have in the past in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy; so that the heat evolved may reappear as potential energy in the warmth of a kindly reasonableness on both sides, rather than suffer degradation to the level of cosmic frigidity.

Great questions, also, of education, of economic, industrial and social conditions, and of legal and political relations are now demanding all the light which science can bring to bear upon them. Though tardily perceived, it is now admitted, generally, that science must not only participate in the development of these questions, but that it alone can point the way to the solutions of many of them. But there is no halting ground here. Science must likewise enter and explore the domain of manners and morals; and these, though already largely modified unconsciously, must now be modified consciously to a still greater extent by the advance of science. Only within quite recent times have we come to realize an approximation to the real meaning of the trite saying that the proper study of man is man. So long as the most favored individuals of his race, in accordance with the hypothesis of the first centuries, looked upon him as a fallen, if not a doomed, resident of an abandoned reservation, there could be roused little enthusiasm with respect to his present condition; all thought was concentrated on his future prospects. How incomparably different does he appear to the anthropologist and the psychologist at the beginning of the twentieth century! In the light of evolution he is seen to be a part of, and not apart from, the rest of the universe. The transcendent interest of this later view of man lies in the fact that he can not only investigate the other parts of the universe, but that he can, liy means of the same methods, investigate himself.

I would be the last to look upon science as furnishing a speedy or a complete panacea for the sins and sorrows of mankind; the destiny of our race is entangled in a cosmic process whose working is thus far only dimly outlined to us; but it is nevertheless clear that there are