But while the scientist's spirit and his achievements stir an unqualified admiration in modern men, and while his discoveries carry conviction as nothing else does, it does not follow that the manner of man which this quest of knowledge produces or requires comes near answering to the current ideal of manhood, or that his conclusions are felt to be as good and beautiful as they are true. The ideal man, and the ideal of human life, even in the apprehension of those who most rejoice in the advances of science, is neither the finikin skeptic in the laboratory nor the animated slide-rule. The quest of science is relatively new. It is a cultural factor not comprised, in anything like its modern force, among those circumstances whose selective action in the far past has given to the race the human nature which it now has. The race reached the human plane with little of this searching knowledge of facts; and throughout the greater part of its life-history on the human plane it has been accustomed to make its higher generalisations and to formulate its larger principles of life in other terms than those of passionless matter-of-fact. This manner of knowledge has occupied an increasing share of men's attention in the past, since it bears in a decisive way upon the minor affairs of workday life; but it has never until now been put in the first place, as the dominant note of human culture. The normal man, such as his inheritance has made him, has therefore good cause to be restive under its dominion. FOOTNOTES: [1] Reprinted by permission from _The American Journal of Sociology_, Vol. XI, March, 1906. [2] Jacques Loeb, _Heliotropismus der Thiere_, and _Comparative Psychology and Physiology of the Brain_. [3] Cf. Gross, _Spiele der Thiere_, chap. 2 (esp. pp. 65-76), and chap. 5; _The Play of Man_, Part III, sec. 3; Spencer, _Principles of Psychology_, secs. 533-35. [4] The myths and legendary lore of the Eskimo, the Pueblo Indians, and some tribes of the northwest coast afford good instances of such idle creations. Cf. various _Reports_ of the Bureau of American Ethnology; also, e.g., Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, esp. the chapters on "Mythology" and "Animism."