ENDS AND MEANS,
occupations, possessing, moreover, a certain special signi-
ficance in virtue of their relation to truth and beauty.
Nevertheless, artistic creation and scientific research may be,
and constantly are, used as devices for escaping from the ,
responsibilities of life. They are proclaimed to be ends
absolutely good in themselves—ends so admirable that
those who pursue them are excused from bothering about
anything else. This is particularly true of contemporary
science. The mass of accumulated knowledge is so great
that it is now impossible for any individual to have a
thorough grasp of more than one small field of study.
Meanwhile, no attempt is made to produce a comprehen-
sive synthesis of the general results of scientific research.
Our universities possess no chair of synthesis. All endow-
ments, moreover, go to special subjects—and almost always
to subjects which have no need of further endowment, such
as physics, chemistry and mechanics. In our institutions of
higher learning about ten times as much is spent on the
natural sciences as on the sciences of man. All our efforts
are directed, as usual, to producing improved means to mi-
improved ends. Meanwhile intensive specialization tends
to reduce each branch of science to a condition almost
approaching meaninglessness. There are many men of science
who are actually proud of this state of things. Specialized
- meaninglessness has come to be regarded, in certain circles,
as a kind of hall-mark of true science. Those who attempt
to relate the small particular results of specialization with
human life as a whole and its relation to the universe at
large are accused of being bad scientists, charlatans, self-
advertisers. The people who make such accusations do so,
of course, because they do not wish to take any responsi-
bility for anything, but merely to retire to their cloistered
laboratories, and there amuse themselves by performing
delightfully interesting researches. Science and art are only
too often a superior kind of dope, possessing this advantage
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