Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/392

388

its results belong not to the few, but to the many, apply not in the domain of industry and our material civilization alone, but over the whole range of life's activities, are not for individual advantage chiefly, but for the public good. When society in general and governments in particular appreciate the true source and guardian of their highest welfare, then many things now desired, and many more no less needful, will be possible of attainment. It does not follow that because nations have for the most part stumbled along through a process of trial and error without planning their trials or measuring the significance of their errors, that they will always entail such waste in a needlessly blind pursuit of progress. The world proceeds by gradual evolution, yet, as we have often insisted and again repeat, this time in the words of Mr. John Morley, 'evolution is not a force, but a process; not a cause, but a law.' Ideas may be forces, purposes may be causes, and intelligent cooperation and organized effort may minister to the economy of social progress as they have to the promotion of success in the whole world of private business. The like principle holds for the internal organization of scientific men and scientific bodies themselves. There must be a solidarity of sympathy and aims among scientific workers if total efficiency, and not merely partial efficiency here and there, is their aim. When the forces of