come men of science. Join the freemasonry in which Hugh Miller, the poor Cromarty stonemason, in which Michael Faraday, the poor bookbinder's boy, became the companions and friends of the noblest and most learned on earth, looked up to by them not as equals merely, but as teachers and guides, because philosophers and discoverers."

When Kingsley delivered this message artisans were crowding in thousands to lectures in Manchester and other populous places by leaders in the scientific world of that time. Labor then welcomed science as its ally in the struggle for civil rights and spiritual liberty. That battle has been fought and won, and subjects in bitter dispute fifty years ago now repose in the limbo of forgotten things. There is no longer a conflict between religion and science, and labor can assert its claims in the market-place or council house without fear of repression. Science is likewise free to pursue its own researches and apply its own principles and methods within the realm of observable phenomena, and it does not desire to usurp the functions of faith in sacred dogmas to be perpetually retained and infallibly declared. The Royal Society of London was founded for the extension of natural knowledge in contra-distinction to the supernatural, and it is content to leave priests and philosophers to describe the world beyond the domain of observation and experiment. When, however, phenomena belonging to the natural world are made subjects of supernatural revelation or uncritical inquiry, science has the right to present an attitude of suspicion towards them. Its only interest in mysteries is to discover the natural meaning of them. It does not need messages from the spirit world to acquire a few elementary facts relating to the stellar universe, and it must ask for resistless evidence before observations contrary to all natural law are accepted as scientific truth. If there are circumstances in which matter may be divested of the property of mass, fairies may be photographed, lucky charms may determine physical events, magnetic people disturb compass needles, and so on, by all means

let them be investigated, but the burden of proof is upon those who believe in them and every witness will be challenged at the bar of scientific opinion.

We do not want to go back to the days when absolute credulity was inculcated as a virtue and doubt punished as a crime. It is easy to find in works of uncritical observers of medieval times most circumstantial accounts of all kinds of astonishing manifestations, but we are not compelled to accept the records as scientifically accurate and to provide natural explanations of them. We need not doubt the sincerity of the observer even when we decline to accept his testimony as scientific truth. The maxim that "Seeing is believing" may be sound enough doctrine for the majority of people, but it is insufficient as a principle of scientific inquiry. For thousands of years it led men to believe that the earth was the center of the universe, with the sun and other celestial bodies circling round it, and controlling the destiny of man, yet what seemed obvious was shown by Copernicus to be untrue. This was the beginning of the liberation of human life and intellect from the maze of puerile description and philosophic conception. Careful observation and crucial experiment later took the place of personal assertion and showed that events in Nature are determined by permanent law and are not subject to haphazard changes by supernatural agencies. When this position was gained by science, belief in astrology, necromancy, and sorcery of every kind began to decline, and men learned that they were masters of their own destinies. The late War is responsible for a recrudescence of these mediæval superstitions, but if natural science is true to the principles by which it has advanced it will continue to bring to bear upon them the piercing light by which civilized man was freed from their baleful consequences.

There is abundant need for the use of the intellectual enlightenment which science can supply to counteract the ever-present tendency of humanity to revert to primitive ideas. Fifty years of compulsory education are but

a moment in the history of man's development, and their influence is as nothing in comparison with instincts derived from our early ancestors and traditions of more recent times grafted upon them. So little is known of science that to most people old women's tales or the single testimony of a casual onlooker are as credible as the statements and conclusions of the most careful observers. Where exact knowledge exists, however, to place opinion by the side of fact is to blow a bubble into a flame. Within its own domain science is concerned not with beliefexcept as a subject of inquiry-but with evidence. It claims the right to test all things in order to be able to hold fast to that which is good. It declines to accept popular beliefs as to thunderbolts; living frogs and toads embedded in blocks of coal or other hard rock without an opening, though the rock was formed millions of years ago and all fossils found in it are crushed as flat as paper; the inheritance of microbic diseases; the production of rain by explosions when the air is far removed from its saturation point; the influence of the moon on the weather or of underground water upon a twig held by a dowser, and dozens of like fallacies, solely because when weighed in the balance they have been found wanting in scientific truth. Its only interest in mysteries is that of inquiring into them and finding a natural reason for them. Mystery is thus not destroyed by knowledge but removed to a higher plane.

Never let it be acknowledged that science destroys imagination, for the reverse is the truth. "The Gods are dead," said W. E. Henley.

The world, a world of prose, Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted,

Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze! Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows Who will may hear the sorry words repeated:"The Gods are dead.''

It is true that the old idols of wood and stone are gone, but far nobler conceptions conceptions have taken their place. The universe no longer consists of a few thousand

lamps lit nightly by angel torches, but of millions of suns moving in the infinite azure, into which the mind of man is continually penetrating further. Astronomy shows that realms of celestial light exist where darkness was supposed to prevail, while scientific imagination enables obscure stars to be found which can never be brought within the sense of human vision, the invisible lattice work of crystals to be discerned, and the movements of constituent particles of atoms to be determined as accurately as those of planets around the sun. The greatest advances of science are made by the disciplined use of imagination; but in this field the picture conceived is always presented to Nature for approval or rejection, and her decision upon it is final. In contemporary art, literature, and drama imagination may be dead, but not in science, which can provide hundreds of arresting ideas awaiting beautiful expression by pen and pencil. It has been said that the purpose of poetry is not truth, but pleasure; yet, even if this definition be accepted, we submit that insight into the mysteries of Nature should exalt, rather than repress, the poetic spirit, and be used to enrich verse, as it was by some of the world's greatest poets-Lucretius, Dante, Milton, Goethe, Tennyson, and Browning. With one or two brilliant exceptions, popular writers of the present day are completely oblivious to the knowledge gained by scientific study, and unmoved by the message which science is alone able to give. Unbounded riches have been placed before them, yet they continue to rake the muck-heap of animal passions for themes of composition. Not by their works shall we become "children of light," but by the indomitable spirit of man ever straining upwards to reach the stars.

Where there is ignorance of natural laws all physical phenomena are referred to supernatural causes. Disease is accepted as Divine punishment to be met by prayer and fasting, or the act of a secret enemy in communion with evil spirits. Because of these beliefs thousands of innocent people were formerly burnt and tortured as witches and

sorcerers, while many thousands more paid in devastating pestilences the penalty which Nature inevitably exacts for crimes against her. In one sense it may be said that the human race gets the diseases it deserves; but the sins are those of ignorance and neglect of physical laws rather than against spiritual ordinances. Plague is not now explained by supposed iniquities of the Jews or conjunctions of particular planets, but by the presence of an organism conveyed by fleas from rats; malaria and yellow fever are conquered by destroying the breeding places of mosquitoes; typhus fever by getting rid of lice; typhoid by cleanliness; tuberculosis by improved housing; and most like diseases by following the teachings of science concerning them. Though the mind does undoubtedly influence the resistance of the body to invasion by microbes, it can not create the specific organism of any disease, and the responsibility of showing how to keep such germs under control, and prevent, therefore, the poverty and distress due to them, is a scientific rather than a spiritual duty.

The methods of science are pursued whenever observations are made critically, recorded faithfully, and tested rigidly, with the object of using conclusions based upon them as stepping-stones to further progress. They demand an impartial attitude towards evidence and fearless judgment upon it. These are the principles by which the foundations of science have been laid, and a noble structure of natural knowledge erected upon them. A scientific inquiry is understood to be one undertaken solely with the view of arriving at the truth, and this disinterested motive will always command public confidence. It is poles apart from the spirit in which social and political subjects are discussed: it is the rock against which waves of emotion and storms of rhetoric lash themselves in vain. If political science were guided by the same methods it would present an open mind to all sides of a question, weighing objections to proposals as justly as reasons in support of them, whereas usually it sees only the views of a particular class or party, and can

not be trusted, therefore, to strike a judicial balance. The methods of science should be the methods applied to social problems if sound principles of progress are to be determined. When they are so used a statesman will be judged, as a scientific man is judged, by correct observation, just inference, and verified prediction; in their absence politics will remain stranded on the shifting sands of barter, concession, and expediency.

Democracy may be politically an irrational force, but that is all the more reason why those who direct it should have full knowledge of the possibilities offered by science for construction as well as for destruction. In a chemical research an experiment is not the haphazard mixture of substances made in the hope that something good will come from it, but the deliberate test of consequences which ought to follow if certain ideas are true. So with all scientific experiment: reason is the source of action, and principles are tested by results. Social problems are perhaps more complicated than those of the laboratory, yet the only way to discover solutions of them is to apply scientific standards to the methods used and results obtained. Laws of Nature are merely expressions of our knowledge at a particular epoch, and they are more precise than those of political economy because they are investigated purely from the point of view of progress. If the general laws which constitute the science of sociology are to be discovered and accepted, their study must be as impartial as that of any other science. The discovery of exact laws," said W. K. Clifford, "has only one purpose the guidance of conduct by means of them. The laws of political economy are as rigid as those of gravitation; wealth distributes itself as surely as water finds its level. But the use we have to make of the laws of gravitation is not to sit down and cry Kismet' to the flowing stream, but to construct irrigation works."

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Organized Labor has on more than one occasion pronounced a benison upon scientific research, and urged that full facilities should be afforded to those who undertake it.

Not long ago the American Federation of Labor in convention assembled resolved 'that a broad programme of scientific and technical research is of major importance to the national welfare,' and in a noteworthy document insisted upon its essential value in the development of industries, increased production, and the general welfare of the workers. The British Labor Party has also stated that it places the advancement of science in the forefront of its political programme,' but its manifesto refers particularly to the 'undeveloped science of society' rather than to the science of material things; and whatever labor may declare officially, it is scarcely too much to say that artisans in general show less active interest in scientific knowledge now than they did fifty years ago. Not by the study of science does a manual worker become a leader among his fellows but by the discovery of wrongs to be remedied or rights to be established, and by fertility of resource in disputations concerning them. This is natural enough, yet when we remember that many of the greatest pioneers in the fields of pure and applied science were of humble origin it is surprising that labor makes no effort to keep men of this type within its lodges.

If trades unions were true to their title, and not merely wage unions, their members would give as much attention to papers on scientific principles of their industry, craftsmanship, and possible new developments as they do to the consideration of the uttermost they can claim and secure for their members. Not a single labor organization concerns itself with actual means of industrial progress, but only with the sharing of the profits from processes or machinery devised by others. Labor may express approval of scientific and technical research, but if it wishes to be a creative force it should take part in this work instead of limiting itself to getting the greatest possible advantage from the results. Under present conditions an artisan with original ideas or inventive genius has to go outside the circle of his union to describe his work, and he thus becomes separated from his

fellows through no fault of his own. His contributions are judged by a scientific or technical society purely on their merit and without any consideration as to his social position. Labor can never be great until it affords like opportunities to its own original men by accepting and issuing papers upon discoveries of value to science and industry. When it does this, and its publications occupy an honored place among those of scientific and technical societies, it will be able to command a position in national polity which can never be justly conceded to any organization concerned solely with the rights and privileges of a single class in the community.

We know, of course, that few workmen can be expected to possess sufficient knowledge and originality to make developments important enough to be recorded in papers for the benefit of science or industry generally, but every such contribution published by a trade union or other labor organization, federated or otherwise, would do far more to command respect than sheaves of pamphlets upon economic aspects of industry from the point of view of workpeople. If no fundamental or suggestive papers of this kind are forthcoming, or if organized labor persists in its policy of letting its men of practical genius find elsewhere the people who know how to appreciate them, it is tacitly acknowledged that others are expected to provide the seeds of industrial developments while labor concerns itself solely with the distribution of the fruits derived from them.

It is true that some of the leaders of the labor movement realize that close association with progressive science is essential to the expansion of industry and the consequent provision of wages in the future. What is here urged is that labor should itself take part in the scientific and industrial research which it acknowledges is necessary for existence, and should show by its own contributions that it possesses the power to produce useful knowledge as well as the dexterity to apply it. The machinery of trade unionism is capable of much more extensive use than

that to which it has hitherto been put, and when it is concerned not only with securing "for the producers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry," but also with the creation of new plantations by its own efforts, no one will be able to doubt its fitness to exercise a controlling influence upon modern industry.

The Workers' Educational Association has proved that very many artisans are ready to take advantage of opportunities of becoming familiar with the noblest works of literature, science, and art, with the single motive of enriching their outlook upon life. Many more attend classes in economics, and nearly all are in favor of extended facilities for further education, though there is a difference of intention between the Marxian element in labor and the more impartial supporters of the W. E. A. or of the Co-operative Education Union. "There is practically no limit," says Mr. G. D. H. Cole in "An Introduction to Trade Unionism," "to what could be done if there only existed among the national and local leaders of Labor a clear idea of the part which education must play if the working-class is ever to achieve emancipation from the wage system." To education should be added original research if labor is to signify something more than a class of hewers of wood and drawers of water. The Guild movement represents a step in this direction, but if it signifies merely a return to the medieval system it can scarcely be so important a factor of general development as its advocates imagine, and it may mean the institution of caste in labor. Such a system no doubt leads to perfection of craftsmanship, and it is to be welcomed as an antidote to the deadening influence of specialized industry; but a caste nation at last becomes stationary, for in each caste a habit of action and a type of mind are established which can only be changed with difficulty. What is wanted to make the race strong is cross-fertilization, and not inbreeding.

Local scientific societies should provide a common forum where workers with hand or brain can meet to consider new ideas and

discuss judicially the significance of scientific discovery or applied device in relation to human progress. At present such societies are mostly out of touch with these practical aspects of knowledge, and are more interested in prehistoric pottery than in the living world around them. Most of those connected with the British Association are concerned with natural history, but all scientific societies in a district should form a federation to proclaim the message of knowledge from the house-tops. Men are ready to listen to the gospel of science and to believe in its power and its guidance, but its disciples disregard the appeal and are content to let others minister to the throbbing human heart. Civilization awaits the lead which science can give in the name of wisdom and truth and unprejudiced inquiry into all things visible and invisible, but the missionary spirit which would make men eager to declare this noble message to the world has yet to be created.

This is as true of the British Association itself as it is of local scientific societies. It seems to be forgotten that one of the functions of the Association is to inspire belief and confidence in science as the chief formative factor of modern life, and not only to display discoveries or enable specialists to discuss technical advances in segregated sections. Though members of the Association may be able to live on scientific bread alone, most of the community in any place of meeting need something more spiritual to awaken in them the admiration and belief which beget confidence and hope. They ask for a trumpet-call which will unite the forces of natural and social science, and are unmoved by the parade of trophies of scientific conquests displayed to them. It was the primary purpose of Canon W. V. Harcourt, the chief founder of this Association, and General Secretary from 1831 to 1837, to sound this note for "the stimulation of interest in science at the various places of meeting, and through it the provision of funds for carrying on research," and not for "the discussion of scientific subjects in the sections." In the course of time these sectional discussions have taken