What, then, is the precise nature and extent of the contribution of science to our total stock? Although we do not intend its practical applications by this question, we cannot wholly ignore them. It is impossible completely to separate the “material” and “spiritual” aspects of life, and the sum of the practical applications of science has even profoundly affected much of our abstract thinking. Where it has not originated questions it has at least made them acute, if by no other process than by creating or transforming social conditions. It is easy to trace the ancestry of whole schools of social philosophy to the steam engine and the dynamo, and it is probable that the influence of future applications will be even more extensive. The morality, art and philosophy of, for example, a disease-less world, where the average span of human life was two or three times its present value, would certainly differ greatly from our own. We cannot, then, ignore the practical applications of science, although they are not, in themselves, pertinent to our question. But when we turn to consider the direct spiritual value of science we are conscious, at the outset, of some hesitation. It was a common article of the Victorian scientist’s creed that scientific study was, in itself, an “ennobling” and purifying influence. He stressed the complete detachment required, in scientific research, from all prepossessions; the man of science was completely candid, completely docile in face of the facts. Until one became as a little child it was no use entering a laboratory. We have realised since then that scientific men are human, and have their full share of the unfortunate characteristics proper to that state. But it remains true that the scientific ideal of detachment and the scientific ideal of evidence are higher than the corresponding ideals elsewhere. In spite of the evidence furnished by our newspapers we may, if we are optimists, believe that science is gradually infecting the whole community with its conception of these ideals. If this is indeed the case it must be counted a direct and very important moral gain, as an indisputably valuable contribution which may be set over against those somewhat ambiguous practical applications.