When this habit is once acquired and
appreciated, the scientific method will naturally be applied to
the study of questions of social policy. When a scientific
interest is taken in such questions, their boundaries will be
extended beyond the utilities immediately involved, and one
important condition of unceasing progress will be complied with.
XXI
THE OUTLOOK FOR THE FLYING-MACHINE
Mr. Secretary Langley's trial of his flying-machine, which seems
to have come to an abortive issue for the time, strikes a
sympathetic chord in the constitution of our race. Are we not the
lords of creation? Have we not girdled the earth with wires
through which we speak to our antipodes? Do we not journey from
continent to continent over oceans that no animal can cross, and
with a speed of which our ancestors would never have dreamed? Is
not all the rest of the animal creation so far inferior to us in
every point that the best thing it can do is to become completely
subservient to our needs, dying, if need be, that its flesh may
become a toothsome dish on our tables? And yet here is an
insignificant little bird, from whose mind, if mind it has, all
conceptions of natural law are excluded, applying the rules of
aerodynamics in an application of mechanical force to an end we
have never been able to reach, and this with entire ease and
absence of consciousness that it is doing an extraordinary thing.
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