s one uses language. Yet
even in music, though we may enjoy ingenious and fluent
melodic trifles, we regard them less highly than the earnest
and magnificent beauty of a Beethoven symphony.

But because art is only effective when it appeals to the
senses and to the imagination does not mean that the senses
and the imagination must be stirred by insignificance. The
artist may use the rhythms of music, line and color, the
suggestiveness of words, in the interests of ideal values. Gifted,
as he is, with imaginative foresight to imagine a world better
than the one in which he is living, he may, by picturing ideals
in persuasive form, not only bring them before the mind of
man, but insinuate them into his heart. The rational artist
may note the possibilities afoot in his environment. He may
treasure these hints of human happiness, and by giving them
vivid reality in the forms of art indicate captivatingly to men
where possible perfections lie. "For your young men shall
see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." The artist
may become the most influential of prophets, for his prophecies
come to men not as arbitrary counsels, but as pictures of
Perfection intrinsically lovely and intriguing. When Socrates
is asked whether or not his perfect city exists, he replies that
it exists only in Heaven, but that men in beholding it may, in
the light of that divine pattern, learn to attain in their earthly
cities a not dissimilar beauty.

CHAPTER XIV

SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD

WHAT SCIENCE IS. Science may be considered either as the
product of a certain type of human activity, or as a human
activity satisfactory even apart from its fruits. As an activity,
it is a highly refined form of that process of reflection by
which man is, in the first place, enabled to make himself at
home in the world. It differs from the ordinary or common-sense
process of thinking, as we shall presently see, in being
more thoroughgoing, systematic, and sustained. It is common
sense of a most extraordinarily refined and penetrating
kind. But before examining the procedure of science, we
must consider briefly its imposing product, that science whose
vast structure seems to the layman so final, imposing, and
irrefragable.

From the point of view of the product which is the fruit of
reflective activity, Science may be defined as _a body of
systematized and verified knowledge, expressing in general terms the
relations of exactly defined