The literary digest . ying science to thewrong ends. Possil)ly science should never have been appliedto making man comfortable, but to making him perfect., Itmay be that there is gi-eat danger in comfort. The biologistholds it in grave suspicion. Degeneracy is its sequel. Oh, well, it is replied, there are no signs of physical degen-eration yet. Look at our armies. Finer physical specimensnever marched out to meet an enemy. This is true, and wemay add—braver ones never went to war, and they wer(> 100 percent, efficient. Yes, but they were picked men, the very flowerof a vast nation. They we
The literary digest . ying science to thewrong ends. Possil)ly science should never have been appliedto making man comfortable, but to making him perfect., Itmay be that there is gi-eat danger in comfort. The biologistholds it in grave suspicion. Degeneracy is its sequel. Oh, well, it is replied, there are no signs of physical degen-eration yet. Look at our armies. Finer physical specimensnever marched out to meet an enemy. This is true, and wemay add—braver ones never went to war, and they wer(> 100 percent, efficient. Yes, but they were picked men, the very flowerof a vast nation. They were from the upper tenth were the young males. Th(>y were the 65 per cent, of theyoung males not rejected by the examining boards. The germ-plasm of the best of our race could not suffer deterioration in theshort time of the comfort regime. But upon biological groundswe must believe that the disastrous consequences of such a r<<gimoupon society as a whole may be serious in the highest IS SCIENCE A BLESSING? Dr. Patrick doubts if it lias done usas much good as we fondly suppose. Another of the most briUiant triumphs of applied scienceis seen in our countless and wonderful labor-saving why has it been assumed that labor-saving devices are ahuman benefit? Work, and indeed physical work, is a blessing,not a curse. During the past history of man, which we mayreckon in hundreds of thousands of years, Nature has said tohim, You must work or die. Is it not conceivable that applied science might be used notonly to reduce the hours of labor of those who are now crushtwith excessive labor, but to devise means of preventing the dis-astrous biological consequences which must follow the cessationfrom healthful labor among a considerable portion of society? And then there are the time-saving devices. It is no doubtbecause of the temper of the day that so few of us have everquestioned their intrinsic value. But with all these time-savingdevices i
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