Scientists quietly observing certain aspects of reality--those which lend themselves to knowing as a specialized undertaking--are happy to find that their abstract conceptions mutually imply and support one another in an ordered system of knowledge. Their own reason which they are thus able to impose upon nature, they believe they have discovered in nature itself. Hence nature appears to be more ordered than it really is, and to be essentially reasonable and beneficent. Compare Huxley’s picture of nature as a beneficent mother of whom the educated mind “makes the best, and she of him,” he “her conscious self, her minister and interpreter,” with William James’ statement about “this partially hospitable and ‘stepmotherly’ world of ours.” The latter is surely the more profound and correct view. Water is not only H₂O, it may drown you or quench your thirst. Fire is not merely a process of oxidation, it is hot. It may be your willing servant, or your relentless enemy. The modification of species which nineteenth century scientists held to be the outcome of natural selection is not what natural selection means to the organisms which experienced it. To them it is a relentless struggle for a precarious and fleeting existence in which satisfactions and victories are mingled with terror and starvation and agony. And man placed in the midst of such a world seeks education not only that he may interpret its happenings to an intelligence which is part of the natural process, but that he may select wisely among the alternatives which Nature presents to him, lift himself above chaos and the slime, and achieve an existence that, at least while it lasts, has some significance and quality of decency and worth. It is to this end that science is education; a true Humanism is impossible without it. Such a Humanism is as anti-supernaturalistic as determinism. But it is naturalism with mankind, however, not merely pictured as a passive resultant of natural forces, but actively selecting and creating value. As Huxley himself says, its aim is to provide criteria for a “criticism of life.” “Moreover this scientific ‘criticism of life’ presents itself to us with different credentials from any other. It appeals not to authority, nor to what anybody may have thought or said, but to nature. It admits that all our interpretations of natural fact are more or less imperfect and symbolic, and bids the learner seek for the truth not among words but among things. It warns us that the assertion which outstrips evidence is not only a blunder but a crime.” He saw a new culture in process of development, one which would enlist the whole spiritual life of mankind,