t the good must prevail if good
men will only follow their better leading.

Here then is our period, marked in public affairs by a progress from
one conflict, desperate and tragic, between two of the leading nations
of the West, to another and still more terrible which swept the whole
world into the maelstrom; and marked in thought by a certain dispersion
and depression of mind, a falling in the barometer of temperament and
imagination, but also by a grappling with realities at closer quarters.
No wonder that some have seen here a 'tragedy of hope' and the
'bankruptcy of science'.

But it must be noted at once that these obvious landmarks, though
striking, are in themselves superficial. They require explanation rather
than give it, and in some cases an explanation, much less tragic than
the symptom, is suggested by the symptom itself. We may at least fairly
treat them at starting simply as beacon-hills to mark out the country we
are traversing. We have to go deeper to find out the nature of the soil,
and travel to the end to study the vista beyond.

In making this fuller analysis of man's recent achievement, especially
in the West, the first, and perhaps ultimately the weightiest, element
we have to note is the continued and unexampled growth of science. Was
there ever a more fertile period than the generation which succeeded
Darwin's achievement in biology and Bunsen's and Kirchhoff's with the
spectroscope? Both have created revolutions, one in our view of living
things, the other in our view of matter. In physics the whole realm of
radio-activity has come into our ken within these years, and during the
same time chemistry, both organic and inorganic, has been equally
enlarged. All branches of science in fact show a similar expansion, and
a new school of mathematicians claim that they have recast the
foundations of the fundamental science and assimilated it to the
simplest laws of all thinking. Some discussion of this will be found in
the chapter on philosophy.

It may serve as tonic--an antidote to that depression of spirits of
which we have spoken--to consider that such an output of mental energy,
rewarded by such a harvest of truth, is without precedent in man's
evolution. No single generation before ever learnt so much not only of
the world around it but also of the doings of previous generations. For
since 1870 we have been living in an age as much distinguished for
historical research as for natural science.