ins his way only by studying nature and
by applying his carefully won empirical knowledge to the guidance of his
arts. The business of life--so we have been moved to assert--must
therefore be guided simply by an union of plain common sense with the
scientific study of nature. The real world, we have been disposed to
say, is, on the whole, so far as we can know it, a mechanism. Therefore
the best ideal of life involves simply the more or less complete control
of this mechanism for useful and humane ends. Such, I say, is one very
commonly accepted result to which modern knowledge seems to have led
men. The practical view of life and of its business which expresses this
result has been, for many of us, twofold. First, we have been led to
this well-known precept: If you want to live wisely, you must, at all
events, avoid superstition. That is, you must not try to guide human
life by dealing with such supernatural powers, good and evil, as the
mythologies of the past used to view as the controlling forces of human
destiny. You must take natural laws as you find them. You must believe
about the real world simply what you can confirm by the verdict of human
experience. You must put no false hopes either in magic arts or in
useless appeals to the gods. You must, for instance, fight tuberculosis
not by prayer, but by knowing the conditions that produce it and the
natural processes that tend to destroy its germs. And so, in general, in
order to live well and wisely you must be a naturalist and not a
supernaturalist. Or in any case you must conform your common sense not
to the imagination that in the past peopled the dream world of humanity
with good and evil spirits, but to the carefully won insight that has
shown us that our world is one where natural law reigns unyielding,
defying equally our magic arts and our prayerful desires for divine aid.
But secondly, side by side with this decidedly positive advice, many of
us have been brought to accept a practical attitude towards the world
which has seemed to us negative and discouraging. This second attitude
may be expressed in the sad precept: Hope not to find this world in any
universal sense a world of ideal values. Nature is indifferent to
values. Values are human, and merely human. Man can indeed give to his
own life much of what he calls value, if he uses his natural knowledge
for human ends. But when he sets out upon this task, he ought to know
that, however sweet and ideal hum