Medical research has saved the lives of countless numbers of children, so that infant mortality is negligible now as compared with that of the ages that had no science. I am sure no one would wish to give up such a splendid application of modern knowledge to human welfare. Yet even this has its price. There are biologists who doubt if the amount of human suffering has been so greatly reduced as we at first supposed. They say that many physically unfit persons are thus preserved, only to suffer in later life, and that the survival to maturity, of such poorly equipped organisms and their reproduction lowers the quality of the racial stock of the nation. This is an extreme position and is perhaps a premature conclusion, but it illustrates my point that at best our modern knowledge may not be had without paying some price for it. Theoretical knowledge of nature may be said to be no less costly than applied science. In the sixteenth century man could without fear of contradiction proclaim the earth to be the center of the Universe and his own welfare and salvation the purpose of creation. Every step in the progress of science from Newton to Einstein has tended to rebuke the egotism of man--unless perchance he could find compensation in the fact that he is a creature who has the intellectual courage to saw off the bough of sustaining belief that he is sitting on. Early astronomy revealed to man that his earth, far from being “the Center” was but a perishable and relatively very small kind of moon whirling about a slowing cooling sun, by no means the best of a galaxy of bigger and brighter suns all moving by necessity through freezing space in utter indifference to the inhabitants of this little planet. Chemistry showed man that his glowing life was a molecular process. Physics taught him that all change and movement were but the redistribution of a meaningless and purposeless energy the quantity of which remained forever constant. Geology reminded him that he was but a newcomer among the forms of life which had lived and left their remains in the crust of the earth. Biology revealed to him his kinship with other animals and his lowly origin. Psychology sought to find his soul, and gave up the search, finding it easier to account for his behavior in terms of animal impulse and reflex action. Anthropology discovered for him the origin of his cherished beliefs in the customs of primitive man. Sociology reduced his individual existence to that of a statistical unit in the mass.