ience. Each scientist feels compelled by an unwritten
but rigid code of professional ethics to confine himself strictly to the
cultivation of the little plot of ground on which he happens to be
working, and is forbidden to express an opinion about what he may know
has been discovered on another plot of ground on which his neighbor is
working, except by express permission. In other words, science teaching
has now become strictly a matter of authority, this authority being
vested in the various specialists; and nobody is permitted to look at it
in a broad way, or to frame a general induction from the sum of all the
facts of nature now discovered, under penalty of scientific
excommunication. The scientific code of ethics forbids any general view
of the woods: each man must confine himself to the observation of the
particular tree in front of his own nose.

But these pages have been prepared under the idea that it is high time
to take a more general survey of the geography, time to take our eyes
off the various individual trees, and to look at the woods. Perhaps in
some respects they may be regarded as too technical for ordinary
readers. But if this is the case, it is because the writer had to choose
between this somewhat technical treatment of the subject and the
alternative danger of making loose and inaccurate statements or dealing
in glittering generalities too vague to carry conviction. As it is, the
writer is here trying to give directly to the general public the results
of years of special research in correlating the data from many scattered
departments of science,--results that most scientists would feel obliged
to reserve for the select few of some learned society, to be published
subsequently in the Reports of its "Transactions," and to find their way
after years of delay into the main currents of human thought. But these
dilatory methods of professional pedantry, miscalled "ethics," shall not
longer be allowed to delay the publication of highly important
principles which the public are entitled to know at once, and to know at
first hand. Then, too, it is more than doubtful if any purely academic
body could be found willing to become responsible for giving to the
world conclusions so contrary to the vogue of the present day.

That these brief chapters may clear up the doubts of some, and encourage
the faith of many, is the object of their publication in this
non-professional form.

G. McC. P.

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