Page:Moral Obligation to be Intelligent.djvu/64

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THE CALL TO SERVICE

Science does call you to a service of her own, but her program is perhaps less original than you think. Like religion, she would teach you an attitude of mind, an intimate approach to the universe. Like religion, science also urges you to good works; but whereas the rewards of religion are often indirect or deferred, science can appeal to your selfishness by showing an immediate as well as a remote profit. In this smaller, practical office science might be expected even to surpass the service of religion, telling you how to make yourselves immune to disease, how to regulate your diet, how to choose your dress, how to keep the streets clean, how to secure sanitation. Science has far larger and more difficult things to teach, principles and prospects of which these matters are the merest incidents; but out of her exuberant joy of service she freely bestows these

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