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 intolerance and rich
in sympathy, rejoicing to learn how the other half lives. It is
increasingly interested in human personality, in spite of the fact that
humanity no longer bulks as big in the universe as it did before
scientific discovery shattered the ancient assumption that the world had
been made for man alone.

Perhaps, indeed, it is the perception of our own insignificance which is
making us cling together more closely and seek to understand each other
at least, even if we must ever fail to grasp the full import of the