The Scientific Monthly, October to December, 1915Various
Science
The Scientific Monthly, October to December, 1915
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
To nations no more than to individuals is it given to live by
fear alone. By it a nation may become dominant, and diversity
of body, mind, and ideals be eradicated. To base our
civilization upon fear entails uniformity, monotony of life;
the sacrifice of peoples for the unduly exalted traits and
national ideals of a single homogeneous social group--a single
all-powerful nation. Knowledge of life, and the sympathy for
one's fellow men which springs from it, must control the world
if nations are to live in peaceful and mutually helpful
relations. If life, whether of the individual or of the social
group, is to be controlled, it must be through intimate
knowledge of life, not through knowledge of something else. The
world must be ruled by sympathy, based upon understanding,
insight, appreciation. This is my prophecy, this my faith and
my present thesis.
Material as contrasted with purely intellectual or spiritual
progress is the pride of our time. We worship technology as
reared upon physics and chemistry. But what is our gain, in
this progress, so long as we continue to use one another as
targets? Would it not be wiser, more far-sighted, more humane,
more favorable to the development of universal peace and
brotherhood, to give a large share of our time and substance to
the search for the secrets of life? As compared with the
physical sciences, the biological departments of inquiry are,
in general, backward and ill-supported. Why? Because their
tremendous importance is not generally recognized, and, still
more, because the control of inanimate nature as promised by
physical discovery and its applications appeals irresistibly
both to our imagination and to our greed. We long for
peace--because we are afraid of war--we long for the perfecting
of individual and social life, but much more intensely and
effectively we long for wealth, power and pleasure.
What I have already said and now repeat in other words is that
if we really desired above anything attainable on earth the
lasting peace of nations, we should diligently foster and
tirelessly pursue the sciences of life and seek to perfect and
exalt the varied arts and technologies which should be based
upon them. Experimental zoology and genetics; physiology and
hygiene; genetic psychology and education; anthropology and
ethnology; sociology and economics, would be held in as high
esteem and as ardently furthered as are the various physical
sciences and their technologies.
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