e attained.

Is the older union of thought to be permanently lost? If not, you must
find it again in some higher synthesis. There are many who would do so
in the pursuit of mathematics and the natural sciences; in them, at
least, no divisions of country can be found. The student in his chemical
laboratory, the doctor in his hospital, the mathematician in his study,
finds his colleagues in every country in the civilized world, and it
matters not to him whether the next step in penetrating the secrets of
nature have been made in Vienna, or in Paris, or Amsterdam, or Bologna.

There are many who believe that on this basis will be established the
Union of Civilization. If we look, however, more critically, we may find
reason to doubt whether this optimistic view is justified. I do not
share this hope and this belief, I do not look forward to a spiritual
and intellectual unity of the nations established on the basis of
scientific education. It is, indeed, impossible to over-estimate not
only the practical but also the intellectual influence of what we may
call the scientific spirit. It is indeed true that those who are
accustomed to the careful and systematic investigation of causes, who
have been trained from their earliest years to recognize in the pomp and
pageantry of the external world--and even to some extent in the working
of the human mind and the structure of human society--the orderly
sequence of natural law, will have a type and character of mind
essentially different from those who have not passed through this
discipline. The civilization (I scarcely dare to use the word culture)
of those nations who have this in common will have a unity of their own,
and will differ fundamentally from their own past and from that of other
races.

On the other hand there are two considerations that I should like to put
before you, as leading to a less important position, the one arising
from the practical nature of science, the other connected with its
essential intellectual origin.

It is a characteristic of all work in physical science that however it
may originate in the pure desire for truth, it is very quickly available
for practical use, personal comfort, the acquisition of wealth, and
national efficiency. The physicist who calculates the stresses and
strains of an aeroplane finds that in teaching man how to control nature
he is also providing the means for his struggle, whether in peace or
war, in commerce or on the ba