VIRGINIA TAYLOR MCCORMICK, associate Editor of The Lyric, a magazine of verse, is already known to our readers. Her contribution on Flecker will be welcomed by those already acquainted with his work and will form the introduction of others to this genius of song.

DR. ERNEST CARROLL MOORE is director of the University of California, Southern Branch, located at Los Angeles, former professor at Harvard and nationally known educator. Philosopher by nature and training, when he turns from his multitudinous activities to discuss philosophy what he writes is sure to be of interest. On Logic is the title he chooses in defence of that ancient discipline.

FREDERICK MARSH BENNETT is a minister of Youngstown, Ohio, whose philosophical nature has been stirred by the "scientific" statement that "after all, love is only a chemical reaction." Is it scientific to say that all values of life including the soul can be thus brought to material appraisement and that this appraisal is final? He offers an answer.

DR. CHARLES COKE WOODS, a Methodist minister of Monrovia, California, is already widely known for his nature books, "In the Beauty of Meadow and Mountain," and "Our Spiritual Skies," as well as for his

verse.

MR. GEORGE LAW, author of The Barren Ideal, has, we believe, set forth the spirit of John Burroughs with unimpeachable fidelity as well as with rare literary skill. We do not believe in John Burroughs' religious philosophy, greatly as we admire his appreciation of nature. We believe his intuitions were better than his explanations. Reginald Wright Kauffman is to present the other side in the next number.

IS IT too much to say that superstition gets its initial impulse from the absence of a sense of humor? Humor enables a man to criticize the pretensions and claims. of himself and his fellow-men and out of this criticism spring normal action and normal knowledge. When any man, party, or institution takes itself too seriously to be amenable to criticism it immediately bolsters its unjustified claims by the appeal to standing, authority, ipsi dixitism, and intolerance of various kinds. It appeals from the facts to superstition, which is defined as belief not supported by the facts. We have seen within the past four centuries the proud and contemptuous ipsi dixit religious man brought low. During the past fifty years our work upon him has been cumulative and intensive. He has been living in a world thoroughly determined to leave him no superstition to which he may cling. Science has been the principal agent in this good work and it is assumed by our most "progressive" thinkers that superstition has been all but banished from culture. It is just this assurance that gives life, fate, or whatever you may call it another laugh. For some scientists have come to take themselves with the same ipsi dixit certainty and self-assurance that once characterized the theologian. Of course, some one will at this point arise to remark that this is the proper attitude for science. Such a remark proves our point that some scientists take themselves too

seriously. In their chosen field they see no place for humor and hence have lost the gentle art of self-criticism.

This assurance which has grown out of the great practical triumphs of science has created a mood which dominates present-day life. The result is that with a great multitude any theory, however illogical, is accepted in full of its own claims if it be set forth as scientific. But it is not our aim in this essay to deal with the grosser and more popular superstitions which provide the ground for nostrums of various kinds, for quack medicine, quack psychology, quack social theory or quack "scientific" religion. We wish to discuss the superstitions of the even more incredulous who are staking their whole world of knowledge upon the factuality of scientific hypotheses of which the best that may be said is that they do not disagree with facts so far as we at present know them, and of which the worst that may be said is that they are not scientifically proved. For long years superstition has been presumed solely the possession of religion. It was supposed to have been completely eradicated from progressive and up-to-date thinking by the cold, calm, impartial criticism of science and modernity. A strange paradox works, however, in the midst of life and frequently the most incredulous are the ones most likely to be caught and thrown off their guard by the skill of the magician. Incredulity scarcely ever extends to a complete skepticism. Frequently its denials of one class of belief are in exact intensity with its affirmation of another class. Its lack of gullibility in one line often favors a more gullible attitude in another. It is only human that while this process goes on the individual prides himself that he accepts nothing but facts. The growth of modern naturalism has led to a profound feeling of sophistiIcation with the world of nature and of life. We look on men of other minds and beliefs with a sophomoric contempt for the period when we too labored in the freshman state of unenlightenment. Sophomoric contempt, however, springs from slight and partial acquaintance with reality. We seem at present, as always, in danger from the sophomores. In our modern life and thought their

smiling incredulity shames our belief until with deeper acquaintance we discover the hollowness of their claims to enlightenment.

The practical effect of this mood has been the thinning of culture, the rise of a scientific dogmatism often intolerant toward the higher values of life and a narrowing of interests to the exclusion of all historical perspective.

That New Knowledge Abrogates the Old

The first of these present-day superstitions might well be taken as the superstition that all discovery in the realm of knowledge contradicts and denies all previous belief or understanding. It is only fair to say that theologians of the dogmatic sort by their indifference to the honest work of science and their hostility to its innovations helped to create this mood. Herein science only accepted what was given it in the beginning. What was reluctantly accepted has now grown to be traditional. The superstition finds practical result in the assumption that whatever is old is ignorant and inferior. The typical text-book drills the rising generation in contempt for the past. The Greeks produced the highest type of art and philosophy. The Egyptians possessed a mechanical skill which would be the despair of the modern artisan if he were not ignorant of it; for instance, the masonry of the pyramids. The Arabic culture preserved earlier ideas and made modern science possible. The Middle Ages originated the Gothic, and yet all these attainments which out-top in single aspects those of our own age are treated with contempt as "out-of-date," "behind the times," and to be lightly dismissed. Thus it is that the age runs to light-headedness and we become impatient with all which does not immediately lend itself to our vanity and our love for self-indulgence. What we need to understand is how that which is enduring in our culture roots into the past. Any truth, however old, has its right to hearing. Whatever truths were known or discovered in the past have their fulfilment and find their completion in the truths of today. They are not abrogated but ful

filled. It would be obviously ridiculous to abrogate the Venus de Milo as out of date. The truth of line and conception, the real inspiration of the artist, stand because they are true. Centuries of cubism could never make the Venus de Milo fantastic. Even a certain pinchtoed Bacchante, whose foot has known the modern pointed shoe, seems deformed beside her. When that which is sometimes called art in the present day recovers itself to truth and spirituality it will be seen in its proper relations to all true art.

Much the same is true even of scientific discovery. The ancients did not know nature as we do, but there is no doubt that they knew many things truly. Copernicus did not undo the truth of celestial and terrestrial relations known to the Ptolemaic astronomy. What he offered was a new and truer point of view, which threw new light on long known facts. His discovery was not an abrogation in the sense of making of no moment the real truths involved in Ptolemaism.

We shall never recover a culture which will have power to enhance civilization until we remove from before our eyes the cheap and narrowing superstition that new knowledge abrogates the old.

That Laws Are Self-Executing

This is a very popular modern superstition. We have a law mania. If some great social need arises, our reaction is to enact a law and to depend upon the law to execute itself. Our care seems to be over when the law is on the statute books. How much this popular political superstition may be due to other causes we shall not inquire. It is at least the evidence of a very common misconception. An analogous superstition holds in the realm of scientific thinking. It is commonly supposed that to refer phenomena to a law is to complete all explanation. We do not know what gravity is except that it is gravity, but the average mind rests in disgraceful contentment when told it is a law. We have no idea of what electricity is, though we know many things about the uniformity of