stationary for over two thousand years? I think that we may safely
conclude that the latter is the case.

It has required three centuries of scientific thought and of subtle
inventions for its promotion to enable a modern chemist or physicist
to center his attention on electrons and their relation to the
mysterious nucleus of the atom, or to permit an embryologist to study
the early stirrings of the fertilized egg. As yet relatively little of
the same kind of thought has been brought to bear on human affairs.

When we compare the discussions in the United States Senate in regard
to the League of Nations with the consideration of a broken-down car
in a roadside garage the contrast is shocking. The rural mechanic
thinks scientifically; his only aim is to avail himself of his
knowledge of the nature and workings of the car, with a view to making
it run once more. The Senator, on the other hand, appears too often to
have little idea of the nature and workings of nations, and he relies
on rhetoric and appeals to vague fears and hopes or mere partisan
animosity. The scientists have been busy for a century in revolutionizing
the _practical_ relation of nations. The ocean is no longer a barrier,
as it was in Washington's day, but to all intents and purposes a smooth
avenue closely connecting, rather than safely separating, the eastern
and western continents. The Senator will nevertheless unblushingly appeal
to policies of a century back, suitable, mayhap, in their day, but now
become a warning rather than a guide. The garage man, on the contrary,
takes his mechanism as he finds it, and does not allow any mystic respect
for the earlier forms of the gas engine to interfere with the needed
adjustments.

Those who have dealt with natural phenomena, as distinguished from