Being convinced that the mathematician, at any rate, might be a poet, the respect of imaginative people for science in general has greatly increased. Many of them have decided that science is worth looking into. Unfortunately mathematical physics, the master science of the present day and the one which has furnished ideals for the other sciences, is hopelessly technical. It is agreed that a modern intelligent man, conscious of his responsibilities as an inhabitant of the twentieth century, should be familiar with “the scientific outlook”. But to acquire this outlook by brooding over the teachings and implications of modern physics is not easy. Thus although it is the recent astonishing development in physics which is responsible for the renewed public interest in science, it is other sciences that reap the benefit. We have poets and painters who study anthropology and literary critics who read books on the nervous system. The result appears to have been disastrous. At a time when the physicists are abandoning materialism the artists are accepting it. They are accepting, as the last word of science, a picture of the world that belongs to the early bad manner of physics. Again we hear, but this time from our literary men, that slightly hysterical insistence on the duty of intellectual honesty. It must be admitted that they have been predisposed to accept this view by the War. It is a curious but indisputable psychological fact, perhaps first noted by Tolstoi, that the sight of a large number of naked human bodies makes it difficult to believe that they are animated by immortal spirits possessing an eternal destiny. The sight of the “wastage” that occurred during the War, for those who saw any of it, produced the same curious effect. Also, a psychological fact that cannot be denied, it was difficult to preserve belief in the essential nobility of man when listening to patriotic non-combatants. There can be no doubt that the War, for a large number of those connected with it, has made the acceptance of materialism easier. Even the creative artists, at one time great champions of the spiritual nature of man, are now sufficiently dubious about his nature to be reduced to impotence. [2] I say “almost” because there was Bernhard Riemann and his disciple W. K. Clifford. 2