government, however, if it spreads, must obviously bring with it a new form of culture; the culture
with which we shall be concerned is in the main "liberal," that is to say, of the kind most naturally
associated with commerce. To this there are important exceptions, especially in Germany; Fichte
and Hegel, to take two examples, have an outlook which is totally unconnected with commerce.
But such exceptions are not typical of their age.
The rejection of ecclesiastical authority, which is the negative characteristic of the modern age,
begins earlier than the positive characteristic, which is the acceptance of scientific authority. In the
Italian Renaissance, science played a very small part; the opposition to the Church, in men's
thoughts, was connected with antiquity, and looked still to the past, but to a more distant past than
that of the early Church and the Middle Ages. The first serious irruption of science was the
publication of the Copernican theory in 1543; but this theory did not become influential until it
was taken up and improved by Kepler and Galileo in the seventeenth century. Then began the long
fight between science and dogma, in which traditionalists fought a losing battle against new
knowledge.
The authority of science, which is recognized by most philosophers of the modern epoch, is a very
different thing from the authority of the Church, since it is intellectual, not governmental. No
penalties fall upon those who reject it; no prudential arguments influence those who accept it. It
prevails solely by its intrinsic appeal to reason. It is, moreover, a piecemeal and partial authority;
it does not, like the body of Catholic dogma, lay down a complete system, covering human
morality, human hopes, and the past and future history of the universe. It pronounces only on
whatever, at the time, appears to have been scientifically ascertained, which is a small island in an
ocean of nescience. There is yet another difference from ecclesiastical authority, which declares its
pronouncements to be absolutely certain and eternally unalterable: the pronouncements of science
are made tentatively, on a basis of probability, and are regarded as liable to modification. This
produces a temper of mind very different from that of the medieval dogmatist.
So far, I have been speaking of theoretical science, which is an attempt to understand the world.
Practical science, which is an attempt to change the world, has been important from the first, and
has