Such is knowledge, and such is the price we pay for it. One reason why mankind persistently resists the introduction of knowledge is the disinclination to pay the price. It is not altogether easy, as James said, to “stand this universe.” The longing for the irresponsibility of childhood is very common among mankind, and it gives rise to many comforting fictions which yield reluctantly to knowledge of fact. The general attitude toward wisdom has in it always a touch of the dread of the unknown. There is a very old legend that our first parents were expelled from paradise after eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Even our boasted practical knowledge of nature and of mechanics can hardly be said to be an unmixed blessing. We are not quite so utopian in our enthusiasm over applied science as we were twenty years ago. I once burst into eloquence with an entertaining peroration something like the following: “Everywhere as science displaces the hallowed survivals of primitive magic and superstition, man emerges from darkness with dignity and freedom in his bearing and titanic power in his hands. The great friend for whom humanity has waited is the quiet man in the laboratory amongst his test tubes and apparatus. What kings could not command, nor priests call down from an unanswering heaven, he can command and bring into being to enrich the heritage of happiness for all. The earth blossoms for science. Where the medicine man in the desert once vainly prayed for rain, science digs an irrigation ditch and waste lands turn into fields of grain. Since the beginning of time men have cringed in the shadow of death as the specter of plague walked in their midst heedless of the prayers of faith. Science offers no sacrifice to propitiate revengeful gods: it drains the swamps: it resorts to such mundane devices as screens, vaccine and the quarantine, and for the first time in all history the human race is freed of its most terrifying scourge. Science has drawn the nations together as its lines of mechanical communication have annihilated the spacial distances which have hitherto isolated man from man. It has lightened the burden of toil and has multiplied the productive force of labor a hundredfold. It has lengthened the span of the average human life by nearly a decade.