Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/278

274 we name "nature" or "the world." The way in which I have raised the question forecasts not only my belief that science has done and is doing very much in this direction, but also something of the methods by which I conceive this greatly-to-be-desired good may be still farther attained.

Do you remember how Christian on his journey to the Celestial City used to get out his roll in times of sore perplexity and read what was written therein? The Roll which, according to my doctrine, every successful pilgrim must have easy of access when the trail grows dim, the body weary, and hope and faith weaken while traveling the hard road toward his Fair View of the world, is Common Sense. Notice I do not say such a guide alone would take anybody anywhere. What I mean is that I do not believe anybody's Fair View is truly fair unless he does read in this Roll over and over again. And one of the things I want to hammer home to-night is that Section I. of the Roll is natural history—unostentatious, old-fashioned description, designation and classification of the myriads of objects by which we are surrounded: men and dogs, wagons and cows, trees and disease germs, clouds, rivers and birds, stars and mosquitoes, windmills and cherry blossoms, and all the rest.

I am particularly solicitous about this Section I. of the Roll because generous as is my recognition of what science is doing to help forward a better world view, and profound as is my faith that it will not, in the long run, be lukewarm or ineffective in this part of its mission, I am unable to be blind to the great neglect of this section in our day by many men of science, particularly those who are cultivating certain compartments of the realm of nature. And negligence in both fact and spirit of this first section (of clear description and designation) unavoidably entails considerable neglect of the whole Roll.

To make sure that my allegory is clear, I explain that it means that, according to my view, there are always currents in the sciences of external nature setting against common sense; and that in our era these seem to be particularly numerous and strong. Always in considerable danger of becoming sophisticated, science is specially open to this peril in an era like the present, when the momentum of its advance is so great that restrictions and criticisms leveled against it from the outside are hardly felt by it at all. It is doubtful if internal criticism in any great and well-established realm of knowledge is quite sufficient to insure its complete doctrinal healthfulness.

The particular form of sophistication which science is now suffering and against which pressure from the outside is, I believe, going to compel a reexamination and readjustment, is what is called, indifferently because uncritically, sometimes materialism and sometimes mechanism. A sharp distinction ought, I am sure, to be made between materialism