he clearest evidence of history, dictates a more hopeful
conclusion. Industry, the twin brother of science, has vastly increased
our wealth, our comfort, and our capacity for enjoyment. Medicine, the
most human of her children, has lengthened our lives, fortified our
bodies, and alleviated our suffering. Every chapter in this volume gives
some evidence of the beneficent power of science. For religion,
government, morality, even art, are all profoundly influenced by the
knowledge that man has acquired of the world around him and his
practical conclusions from it. These do not, with the possible exception
of art, contradict the thesis of a general improvement of mankind, and
science must therefore claim a share--it would seem the decisive
share--in the result. We speak, of course, of science in the sense which
has been developed in this essay, of the bright well-ordered centre to
our knowledge which is always spreading and bringing more of the
surrounding fringe, which is also spreading, into the well-defined area.
In this sense religion, morality and government have all within historic
times come within the range of clear and well-ordered thought: and
mankind standing thus within the light, stands more firmly and with
better hope. He sees the dark spots and the weaknesses. He knows the
remedies, though his will is often unequal to applying them. And even
with this revelation of weakness and ignorance, he is on the whole
happier and readier to grapple with his fate.

If this appears a fair diagnosis of the Western mind in the midst of its
greatest external crisis, the reason for this amazing firmness of mind
and stability of society must be sought in the structure which science
and industry combined have built around us. The savage, untutored in
astronomy, may think that an eclipse betokens the end of the world.
Science convinces him that it will pass. Just so the modern world
trained to an order of thought and of society which rests on world-wide
activities elaborated through centuries of common effort, awaits the
issue of our darkened present calmly and unmoved. The things of the mind
on which all nations have co-operated in the past will re-assert their
sway. Fundamentally this is a triumph for the scientific spirit, the
order which man has now succeeded in establishing between himself and
his surroundings.

The country is demanding--and rightly--a stronger bias in our
educational system for teaching of a scientific k