Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/552

548 result in a warm room. When an ocean steamer is to be built at a cost of $15,000,000, the capitalists risk that sum on the prediction of the engineers that if such and such be done, a steamer of well-defined capacities will be the outcome.

We are already in possession of so great a body of truth that no man can know one-hundredth part of that which mankind as a whole has. On looking over the field of what science has accomplished for the amelioration of human life, we are impelled to ask: "How has science solved such problems and conferred such benefits?" Science is the systematized knowledge of the human race. The science which deserves the name is a knowledge of the future. How do we arrive at this knowledge of the future? The answer is familiar.

Science has at her disposal a great number of so-called "laws," that is, knowledge of the interdependence of occurrences. If we know that whenever A happens, B will follow, we have gained two things. If A occurs without act of ours, we can predict the coming of B and so arrange our lives that B will be as advantageous as possible for us, or as little injurious. On the other hand, if we can influence the coming of A, we will avoid A when B is undesirable, or produce A in the reverse case. Science, then, works in two ways. By its help we can prepare ourselves for the future or we can prepare the future for ourselves. Neither of these things is done by man exclusively. All living things have the rudiments of the capacity to see into the future, and even to adapt it to their needs, as, for example, in the case of a certain wasp, which buries along with each egg hidden in the soil, a freshly killed insect, so that the larva may find food at hand. Such primitive forms of conduct directed toward the future do not constitute science; in so much as they are not purposive nor conscious. It is necessary merely to allude to these instinctive acts upon which the existence of a species depends, in order to bring clearly to the understanding the vital importance of science to mankind.

In ancient times work was looked upon as highly undesirable. As a heavy punishment for disobedience regarding the tree of knowledge, the primal curse was imposed: In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy daily bread. Civilized man has arrived at an attitude toward work quite different from this. To him, a life devoid of labor appears empty and shallow. Those who would wish such a life he regards as contemporaries of minor worth. His high aspirations turn, not toward a state free from labor, but, rather to one in which he may enjoy the happiness of choosing the object of his work and its kind.

Even modern conquerors and despots, that is, those collectors and possessors of giant capital, who in our time are the greatest world-power, are infected with the modern need and impulse to work and, however questionable (or unquestionable) their morals may in other respects be,