Armstrong – Table of Contents

have to depend on making decisions upon nothing more than innate common sense. In
such instances a little time spent in meditation and in turning new concepts over in one’s
mind and in comparing them with man’s experience, as revealed in history, is perhaps the
best safeguard against bizarre ideas. Science is bringing us increased leisure, and leisure
may bring culture provided we obey that old maxim of ‘nothing in excess’ and provided
we preserve a proper balance between thinking and doing, between meditation and mere
motion.” In appreciation of his school, Armstrong continued, “It seems to me that Mount
Union College has a fine natural educational asset in her beautiful, quiet, tree-covered
campus surmounted by historic buildings, where those who are privileged to study may
learn, and develop that spirit of repose so necessary to the whirl and change of twentieth
century civilization. Or, where they as Osler (6) put it, develop ‘the calm life necessary to
continuous work for a high purpose.’ For what will the mere solution of the practical
problems of life avail unless we reach a wise conclusion as to how human beings as
members of a world society do and should behave?”
When Charles Armstrong presented these thoughts in June 1933, he was in the
early mid-term of his professional career. It is interesting that society is still dealing with
many of the same “problems” and issues that Armstrong described presciently more than
70 eventful years ago. The ideas he expressed represented the guideposts that directed his
philosophical approach to science, knowledge, society, moral and ethical values as well
as methods of seeking answers posed by problems arising from uncharted areas disclosed
by his investigative quests. His inquisitive mind combined with sustained work energy in
the laboratory enabled him to conceive and find solutions to the nature of many
unfamiliar observations that he encountered in the laboratory. Armstrong always