West Chester University - Serpentine Yearbook (West Chester, PA)

Page 23 text:

THE SERPENTINE Page 15

Page 22 text:

CLASS NINETEEN SIXTEEN niiiiiun of the niundanu than the direct advocates ol the sijirit. Besides freeing- tliein fr(jiii the atrophying effects of routine labor, scientists have made the punisliment of wickedness and vice t|uicker and more certain. Edison, for instance, did more to stop crime when he invented his dynamo and incandescent !am]) than lialf the preachers of the country put together. Not that we think less of the preachers, but tliat we think more of Edison. But scientists ha ' e done more than nierelx inhiljit evil: they have given a method of accomjilishing a result. The extensi -e application of the scientific melliod, which in essence is nothing more than the applica- tion of mathematics, is so patent that we need stop no longer on that subject. Besides they have set an example. The subordination of the in- di ' idual to the masses without su])pression finds its most numerous ex- amples in science and will continue to do so. Unknown the scientist works in his laboratory performing a thousand experiments l)efore he succeeds, ' fhe public know nothing of the days, the weeks, the years, — it took von Baeyer 15 years to synthesize indigo — when unmerciful dis- aster followed faster, followed faster. ' fhey know, if at all, only of suc- cesses. The .scientist has not the commendation nor the condemnation of the many to encourage him. An unshaken faith in his methods, in his ideals, in that Power, whose manifestation he in -estigates. alone holds him to his task. Finally, and most important, the student of science is reared in an atmosphere of orderliness and theism. Chance and atheism find no jilace here. Given certain antecedents and conditions, definite conclusions must follow. This ])rinciple holds for the microcosmos as well as for the macrocosmos. Moreover it does not ]3revent the exercise of prayer and imagination : it simplv makes both more onlerh ' . Do they lose any of their 1)eauty or effecti ' eness thereb} ' ? Are they not really enhanced? Are not the beautiful and the effective, in their final analysis, essentially orderliness ? Even when apparently most iconoclastic, is not science con- structive? Does it not destroy one system of consistencies, only to substi- tute a wider, a deei er, a more spiritual order? Then let us welcome this age of science, not as the inevitable which nuist be endured, but as the greatest means this world has yet ex- perienced for uplifting mankind, not only materially, but spiritually. Herbert Greenw. ld. Page 14

Page 24 text:

CLASS NINETEEN SIXTEEN George Morris Philips Pige l(i