Our Favored LandAuthor(s): Isaiah BowmanSource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 53, No. 6 (Dec., 1941), p. 568Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/17453 .

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568 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

form a setting for the growth of that civilization. His quizzical demurrer, however, passed unnoticed, and the sci- entists continued to observe, experi- ment and build as if he had never lived.

What was the error in Hume's analy- sis ? None of us is persuaded by his dreamy, ultra-critical Buddhism, yet we can not refute him. Two replies are possible. Either the query begs the question, because there was no error; or there are other ways of knowing besides the senses. The former alternative is not without its champions among the scientists to-day. We have our positiv- ists. The advocates of the latter atti- tude, however, are in the majority, be- cause this is the viewpoint of common sense for those of us whose intellectual atmosphere emanates by way of the medieval schoolmen from Aristotle. The

supporters of this latter attitude see the world from the same perspective as did Galileo. He was the first of the mod- erns, but also in so far as he kept faith with the world of matter, efficient causes and souls he was a transmitter of Aris- totelian lore.

We often hear of skeptics among re- ligious and ethical thinkers. Hume was that rare creature, a skeptic among the scientists. He is the precedent for our wondering occasionally, while we use our hot and cold running water and listen to our, radio, whether it is pos- sible that these and the other miracles wrought by science are after all the issue of an incomplete or baseless piece of reasoning, on the part of our ancestors, misled by the fragments of Aristotelian lore remaining in their minds, in the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries.

OUR FAVORED LAND IN our favored land, as in all lands, "nothing

is happy altogether." We occupy, we waste, we suffer, until one day we discover, and report, and at length discuss the common good. The hope arises that with intelligence and spirit we can one day build in America a Civitas Dei out of familiar materials. Statistics are needed for that city as well as hope and faith. Carvers and goldsmiths, cedar and fir, oil and grain are the media of the builders. But over and through all is spirit. This is compounded of faith in the good will and the informed judgment of common people; in the search for and the use of our best not our meanest intelligences; in the university 's relentless insistence upon excellence; in scorn of those who put cynicism and cleverness above self- sacrifice; in unremitting concern for the poor; in a lively sense of the social responsibilities attached to the privileged life of scholarship. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Is remark, "'I have labored carefully not to mock, lament, and

execrate the actions of men; I have labored to understand them," is a good social text for a university man as for the average citizen.

Some sense of glory there must be too if we would unfix the stars. Here and there must be men of vision who proclaim what America can be: men who cherish the unburied past of heroie deeds and ringing words: ever-remembering men: men flashing the signals of deeds done in high spirit. The university, like the church and the market and the court, must proclaim that only such men are fit for our America. We can foretell that America only if we here and now resolve to make that which we foretell. The land is fit for it if we care for it, our stock is capable, our culture maturing.

O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint. ("Oh, only too happy if they could know the advantages they possess.' ')-Isaiah Bowman in the symposium, " The University and the Future of America," at Stanford University.

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