In practical applications of the Röntgen ray America is taking a leading part. But is it to her credit that here, as in so many other cases, she should be willing to have the pioneer work of science performed abroad? Do the planters and waterers of American universities fully realize that if there is to be applied science there must first of all be science to apply, that original research has the first claim upon their regard? "There is that scattereth and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty."
REGENERATION AND SCIENTIFIC ETHICS.
Nordau has been answered. An anonymous author has done it in a book entitled Regeneration.[1] This champion declares pretty nearly everything sound which Nordau finds degenerate, and charges Nordau himself with German, philistine, and irreligious bias, though conceding value as telling factors in the development of our race "to him and his work. With this critic's discussion of literary and artistic matters we will not concern ourselves; but he has one chapter, or, more accurately, a chapter heading, which we hope will not be taken too seriously. This is The Bankruptcy of Science. The charge that science is bankrupt—that it has not redeemed its promises—arose with the French symbolists. In his examination of these writers Nordau repels the charge, and cites a considerable list of scientific achievements as evidence of the solvency of science. Our author does not find this conclusive; for, he says: "The promises which the symbolists refer to as being dishonored by science are not of the kind that could possibly be redeemed by the achievements referred to in Nordau's splendid list. They allude to promises not really made by science, but by rash and prejudiced scientists." In other words, these promises are forgeries, and any one who would call science bankrupt because of its inability to redeem all the forgeries made in its name must be degenerate indeed. The fact that such fraudulent promises have been made and accepted, and of sufficient numbers and face value to attract attention, is really as impressive a testimony to the high standing of science as anything that Dr. Nordau has advanced in its behalf. No knave is ever fool enough to forge large drafts upon a concern that has not proved its ability to meet heavy obligations.
Our author next tells what these unauthorized promises were—that science was to furnish substitutes for religion and morality and to lead the human race into an ideal mode of life—and goes on through a dozen pages charging evil consequences to their nonfulfillment, and denouncing the scientists who made them. Although he says all this under the heading The Bankruptcy of Science, he is careful everywhere not to charge the dishonored promises in question to science itself, but to the "rash and prejudiced scientists," before mentioned, with whom he declares Nordau to be in sympathy. Our author's aggressive chapter heading is, therefore, merely a convenient phrase borrowed from the symbolists, and he is guilty of a petty deceit in using it without quotation marks or other qualification over pages which do not prove nor even charge bankruptcy against science itself.
In discussing the promises of the "rash and prejudiced scientists,"
- ↑ London: Archibald Constable & Co.; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
