Page:The Kingdom of Man - Ralph Vary Chamberlin 1938.djvu/15

Rh The mass and influence of these apologies and rationalizations are so vast and they are involved with emotions so overwhelming that modernity appears as little more than a veneer, a veneer laid on prejudices proceeding, not from primal human nature itself, but from deliberately inculcated educations intended to produce men of some special creed or type. In fact, it has been said, "Every phase of evolution from the Stone Age onward is repeated in the population of the twentieth century world, Victorians, Tudorians, ghosts surviving from the Middle Ages, and multitudes whose minds properly belong to paleolithic times, far outnumber the people who truly appertain to the twentieth century," Never at any one time before has there been such a wealth of mutually contradictory beliefs and opinions. A common resultant attitude is expressed in Mr. Dooley's hibernicism: "One man's opinion is as good as another's, or even better," Some take the position of the Chinese laundryman who during a time of strife between Romanists and Orangemen placed this sign in front of his shop: "Me no religion at all, me only wash clothes."

In spite of the resistance opposed by the preponderance of contradictory systems of thought, science has transformed the world because it has been able continuously to justify itself by its works. Men may and do ignore logic, but they cannot long ignore the compulsion of concrete events and demonstrations. Science has made our civilization, as manifested in material things, in progressive thought, in individual and social emancipation, and especially in all that falls under the heading of rational control. By the free and confident use of his own intelligence man has succeeded in devising a control over the conditions of his existence quite unthinkable in earlier times. His achievements in many ways far transcend the situation in the Regnum hominis or Kingdom of Man foreseen by Francis Bacon and vividly pictured by him to an incredulous age. Today the physical difficulties, the lack of exact, usable knowledge and of self assurance, which necessarily prevented the practical realization of Bacon's schemes, have all been overcome.

And yet civilization faces a crisis. The social situation today to some men, such as Professor Einstein, reveals unmistakable signs of degeneration and decay. However interpreted, it is so obviously one of general confusion, instability, and widening conflict, both between and within nations, and the immediate future is so beclouded, that the need of an early, coherent evaluation of man's nature and behavior is insistent if we are to turn from a course which, in spite of our invincible American optimism, some able thinkers believe is leading toward the greatest tragedy in the history of mankind—the end of modern civilization.

For this perilous situation science itself has been widely blamed. My thesis is that the profound and tragic difficulties in the world today result from man's failure to extend science and the scientific attitude far enough, especially to himself and his immediate affairs, where he finds great difficulty in disentangling his intelligence from his hopes. Not too much science but too little science is at the root