monly ready with language just as strong against those whom they condemn.

In short, evil, especially falsehood, has just now a distinct advantage. A man in power may lie as often as it suits his convenience, and neither shame nor loss of power awaits him. But fearful is the offence of the honest man who shall venture to say in plain words that the lie is a lie. All this paltering with moral evil must have a bad effect on the general moral standard of a people; it is of a piece with that other form of received immorality of speech by which a prince is always to be conventionally endowed with the virtues which he least possesses. Every conventionality, every formality, which tends to weaken the sense of truth and right has a demoralizing effect; and none has a more demoralizing effect than that which confounds mere differences of opinion or judgement with moral crimes the guilt of which is shared by him who palliates them. An honourable adversary, whether in debate or in warfare, is entitled to every consideration, to every courtesy. The point is that tyrants and those who uphold tyrants, those who flatter the oppressor and slander and betray his victims, are not honourable adversaries, but criminals, criminals to be denounced, as righteous men of old, under every law and with every tongue, denounced the evil deeds and the evil men of their own times.

In a word, dealings between nation and nation will never be thoroughly wholesome or thoroughly just till it is acknowledged, practically as well as in words, that nations are to deal with nations according to the same moral laws which are held to bind each man in his dealings with other men. That truth is as yet but feebly grasped; it will never be thoroughly carried out in practice till the idols prestige and interest are broken down as if by the stroke of Jehu or Mahmoud. Nor can a healthy standard of morality in public affairs be ever attained as long as conventionality demands that crimes by which thousands of human beings are calmly consigned to the yoke of unutterable bondage shall be dealt with and spoken of as gently as we willingly speak of mere differences of policy, where one side may be defended with as good a conscience as the other.

EDWARD A. FREEMAN.

THE PRESENT RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF SCIENCE.

T

HE great truth underlying the subject of this paper is that every thing human has its ethical aspect. A stone, a brickbat, an ounce of dynamite, or an ounce of gold, may in itself be absolutely unconnected with the domain of morals; but so soon as it comes into human hands questions of right and duty cluster round it. If this is true of merely material things, still more is it true of operations of mind. Every thought, every imagination, every conclusion, has direct relations with the moral nature as well as with the intellect. It becomes us, then, in viewing the materials of our modern civilization and social systems, to regard them from this point of view, and not to allow any great power to be abroad in the world without questioning it as to its duties and ascertaining what are its rights. It is in this ethical aspect that I desire for a little to regard the developments of modern science.

Science is a term of wide application, and may include any of those subjects of human thought in which facts are systematically arranged and referred to definite general principles. I propose here to take a narrower range, and to restrict myself to those sciences which relate to matter and force the physical and biological sciences. Not that, with one of our modern schools of thought, I regard these as including all science worthy of the name, but because these have in our times attained a growth so vast, and have come to bulk so largely in the eyes of men as agencies for good or evil.

The rapid advance of precise knowledge and of inductive results with reference to matter and the energy which actuates it, and the myriad applications of this knowledge to the arts and

utilities of life, constitute indeed one of the main features of our time-one by which it is markedly distinguished from bygone ages, and one by which it will probably be characterized in the estimates formed of it by ages to come.

The cultivators of science have also come to be a most important class, even in numbers, and in influence greatly more important; and while on the one hand they appear as patient, self-denying plodders, toiling for the good of their fellows, on the other they become aggressive and troublesome when they attempt too rudely to explode our old ideas or to change our old ways.

What duties, then, does society owe to science and its cultivators, and what reciprocal rights devolve on them? Or, to put it in the converse way, What are the rights of science in relation to society, and what its duties to society in return?

With reference to its rights, science has fared very differently in different periods. In the dawn of civilization we can see in Chaldea and in Egypt bodies of learned men sheltering their scientific pursuits under the garb of religion, and cultivating, as a means of securing consideration, no little charlatanry in the form of astrology and divination. Yet these adventitious claims were sometimes dangerous as well as profitable. If the magi of Babylon had not mixed up their science with the forecasting of events and the interpretations of dreams, Nebuchadnezzar would not have condemned them to be slain and their houses made a dunghill. It is not to be concealed that similar baseless pretensions may still produce conflicts between science and other powers in society.

In the Græco-Roman period, with a few exceptions, among which Aristotle stands pre-eminent, science wandered from the safe paths of accurate investigation into those of speculative philosophy, prematurely grasping at the ultimate explanations of things; and so lost credit and cultivated opposition and contempt. We shall see that still the same tendencies produce like results.

The Arabian science, one-sided and unequal, and never penetrating the mass of the people, owed whatever it possessed of good to the inheritance of the practical culture of the East as distinguished from the speculations of Greece. Short-lived and leaving only a few brilliant results, it has at one time been unfairly overlooked and at another unduly exalted.

In the Middle Ages, amidst the expiring agonies of an old world and the birth of a new, the dread realities of life and death pressed too heavily on men's minds to permit much scientific activity, and caused them to cling to civil and ecclesiastical despotisms subversive of free thought and fatal to scientific progress. Yet in those dark ages were laid many foundations of good things to come.

With the emergence of the modern world out of the chaos of the Middle Age, came the revival of learning and the birth of modern science-from the first a healthy babe, cradled by the ancient and modern literature and the reformed religions; at first walking hand in hand with them, but latterly showing a tendency to use its young vigor to smite down these its old nurses and associates, and to claim the whole field of humanity for itself. It is this young Samson, revelling in his early strength, who presents himself to us now, that we may consider what rights he should enjoy, what duties he should perform.

The right of investigation may now be said to be freely granted to modern science. The denunciations of the impiety of prying into the secrets of nature, and the jeux d'esprit once current as to the pursuits of naturalists, are now quoted only to be laughed at, or are confined to such naughty things as vivisection or to the too ostentatious proclamation of our affinity with imagined poor relations like apes and gorillas. Further, the ordinary man of business is well aware that he is indebted to science for most of the conveniences and accommodations that surround him at home, facilitate his movements when abroad, and enable him to communicate with distant friends, as well as for a thousand safeguards that are thrown around his health and his property. He may know little of the facts or principles involved in the transmission of his message across the Atlantic, but he is quite sure that somebody must understand them, and that this somebody, whoever he is, must be a useful and respectable person, and should be encouraged rather than otherwise. Besides, he has a dim notion that there are men still working at problems yet unsolved which may some day minister still farther to safety and comfort; and though he would scarcely feel called upon to contribute to the maintenance of such persons, since after all they may prove to be but dreamers, it would be wrong to hinder them.

Nay, modern society is disposed to go much farther than this. Most of the great civilized countries of the world are now familiar with scientific commissions of one kind or another. We have, for example, National and State geological surveys, which are supposed to be specially intended to develop the mineral resources of the districts which they explore, or perhaps to reflect some glory upon the community which supports them, for its liberal patronage of science. The geological survey, once established, becomes a very general scientific survey, less perhaps for the advantage of economic industries, except indirectly, than had been intended, but greatly for the advancement of pure science.

Occasionally, when some insect or vegetable plague makes its ravages very severely felt, the ridicule which usually attaches to fly-catching and bug-hunting, or the gathering of obscure fungi, gives place to some temporary regard for these occupations, and the entomologist or botanist is subsidized that he may discover the cause of the trouble. The despised man of science thus has his revenge, and he usually takes it. Again, places are often given in our educational institutions to eminent specialists, not because of their ascertained aptitude for teaching, but because of the reputation which they have gained, and which is reflected on the institution with which they may become connected. Thus while education sometimes loses, science gains; but in this way men are often misplaced, and good workers are converted into indifferent professors.

Latterly these imperfect methods have been somewhat decried, and there has been some agitation as to the endowment of scientific research for its own sake—a somewhat difficult matter, for not only has the public to be persuaded to spend its money on what is apparently unprofitable, but the right men have to be found, and care has to be taken that under the influence of generous diet they do not become fat and lazy.

One of the best and safest means of giving such support is undoubtedly that of furnishing facilities for study in great libraries, museums, and laboratories, and in providing means for the publication of results, as is now done in connection with universities and learned societies, and in such great institutions as the Smithsonian and the institutes founded by the liberality