the
works of Shakspere and of Moliere are not of equal value,--and even the
finest of them is not impeccable; and a literary critic who has a
scientific sincerity will not gloss over the minor defects, whatever his
desire to concentrate attention on the nobler qualities by which
Shakspere and Moliere achieved their mighty fame. Indeed, the scientific
spirit will make it plain that an unwavering admiration for all the
works of a great writer, unequal as these must be of necessity, is proof
in itself of an obvious inability to perceive wherein lies his real
greatness.

Whatever the service the scientific spirit is likely to render in the
future, we need to be on our guard against the obsession of science
itself. There is danger that an exclusive devotion to science may starve
out all interest in the arts, to the impoverishment of the soul. Already
there are examples of men who hold science to be all-sufficient and who
insist that it has superseded art. Already is it necessary to recall
Lowell's setting off of "art, whose concern is with the ideal and the
potential, from science which is limited by the actual and the
positive." Science bids us go so far and no farther, despite the fact
that man longs to peer beyond the confines. Vistas closed to science are
opened for us by art; and science fails us if we ask too much; for it
can provide no satisfactory explanation of the enigmas of existence.
Above all, it tempts us to a hard and fast acceptance of its own
formulas, an acceptance as deadening to progress as it is false to the
scientific spirit itself. "History warns us," so Huxley declared, "that
it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies, and to end
as superstitions."

II

The growth of the scientific spirit is not more evident in the
nineteenth century than the spread of the democratic movement. Democracy
in its inner essence means not only the slow broadening down of
government until it rests upon the assured foundation of the people as a
whole, it signifies also the final disappearance of the feudal
organization, of the system of caste, of the privileges which are not
founded on justice, of the belief in any superiority conferred by the
accident of birth. It starts with the assertion of the equality of all
men before the law; and it ends with the right of every man to do his
own thinking. Accepting the dignity of human nature, the democratic
spirit, in its finer manifestations, is free from int