The higher learning owes the intrusion of the sciences in part to
these aberrant scions of the leisure class, who have come under
the dominant influence of the latter-day tradition of impersonal
relation and who have inherited a complement of human aptitudes
differing in certain salient features from the temperament which
is characteristic of the regime of status. But it owes the
presence of this alien body of scientific knowledge also in part,
and in a higher degree, to members of the industrious classes who
have been in sufficiently easy circumstances to turn their
attention to other interests than that of finding daily
sustenance, and whose inherited aptitudes and anthropomorphic
point of view does not dominate their intellectual processes. As
between these two groups, which approximately comprise the
effective force of scientific progress, it is the latter that has
contributed the most. And with respect to both it seems to be
true that they are not so much the source as the vehicle, or at
the most they are the instrument of commutation, by which the
habits of thought enforced upon the community, through contact
with its environment under the exigencies of modern associated
life and the mechanical industries, are turned to account for
theoretical knowledge.
Pages:
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490