THE SUPERSTITIONS OF SCIENCE.
WE have no quarrel with the men of science, for they do a great deal to make life easier, pleasanter, and more interesting. We cannot, however, help observing that they are among the most superstitious of mankind. Their faith in chimeras, their readiness to be run away with by words, their tendency to take the part for the whole and to worship blindly and perversely at their own little shrine, is often perfectly astounding. Not only are they sure that what they know not is not knowledge—of course, when we say " they " we only mean the typical men of science, and not the greater minds who learn humility, not cock-sureness, from the sight of that vast ocean by whose shore they pick up these pebbles—bat they hold that science when applied to life is producing an absolute revolution in the world and altering man's position in the universe. Only let science have a little more time to apply its discoveries, and the earth will be a completely different place. That is the attitude of some of the natural philosophers of the present day.
M. Berthelot, the great French chemist, and his brothei men of science have been indulging in an orgy of this kind of talk during the past week. At a great International Congress of Applied Chemistry held in Paris, M. Bertheloi told his delighted hearers that modern science had doring the last seventy-five years produced changes so marked, that "a new man was being created in a new earth." All th€ ordinary social and political phenomena to which we arc accustomed, he implied, are of no account. They are men walls of Jericho ready to fall down before the blasts of thc trumpet of applied chemistry. When meat and wheat arc produced by a chemical process "the international condition of the world will be changed." So ran M. Berthelot's song
of triumph, or rather prophecy of the golden age of science when, in the words of Mr. Graves's charming rendering of the Pollie, "everything needful will grow everywhere" :— " Then, relieved from the annual labours of sowing, Of ploughing and stacking, of reaping and hoeing, Ev'ry son of the soil, whether stupid or clever, Will be free to do nothing for ever and ever: As for weavers and dyers, they'll find, the poor fellows, Their whole occupation is gone, like Othello's. For the rams in the field, if you ask them politely, Will furnish all colours and patterns, like Whiteley : And the frolicking lamb, as the grasses he chews, Assume the most gorgeous of Liberty's hues."
Now, with all due deference to M. Berthelot, we are obliged to declare that this dream of a beneficent "Aluminium age," in which mankind shall sit enthroned like a god with a sceptre marked "Chemical Process" in one hand and an orb in the other inscribed with the blessed words "Electric Motor," is
pure superstition. He may carry chemical process as far as he likes ; he may make mutton chops direct from "selected fodder grasses ; " he may make his intestines shine like a
lamp, and photograph his brain thinking or his stomach digesting ; but this will not make him a new man in a new world. If M. Berthelot could only shake off the cant of science for a moment, would forget to "wink and shut his apprehensions up from common-sense of what men were and are," was not, in fact, among those "who would not know what men must be," he would see that all these things are in truth nothing but curious toys or else mere pieces of machinery,—appliances for doing faster and more copiously what man has done slowly and sparsely before. You may produce wildernesses of machinery and pile process upon pro- cess, but the mind of man remains untouched and unchanged.
It is not the perfecting of the arts of life or any revolution in the trades of the butcher, the baker, or the smith that will make a new man in a new earth. The great changes in the world, the revolutions that really count, that shake the globe, and do indeed leave a new man in a new earth, come when the spirit is touched, not when this or that ingenious triumph is achieved over matter. One word that is capable of touching the heart and moving the conscience of man- kind is more potent, more prevailing, than the discovery of any trick, however strange and subtle, for harnessing the lightning or bringing bread from earth and stones. Does M. Berthelot suppose that if our Lord, instead of preaching the Sermon on the Mount, had explained to his hearers the use of steam and electricity or the means of discovering a dozen new metals, he would have made thereby new men in a new world ? The Roman world would have rolled its triumphant tide as before, and nothing would have been changed except the superficies. The iron engines would have panted down the Appian Way and the Imperial city would have doubled her luxury and her population, but her heart would have remained as stony, and her citizens as much "the atheists and Epicures," they were before. The Sermon on the Mount did not make new men and a new world by chemical process. Its discoveries were of a very different kind. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you." "Judge not, that ye be not judged." These were the new-found truths that touched the heart and quickened the conscience, and made in time an utterly new race of men in a new world. The sense of pity and rnth and of a mercy infinite and unstrained, the overwhelming of the wild justice of revenge in the higher justice of forgiveness, the doctrine of love invincible, un- earned, and unbought, had come into the earth and changed it for ever. The Christian world is indeed a new world. The world, since steam and electricity, is simply the world of the eighteenth century plus a certain number of extra facilities which it would now seem bard to lose, but which when they had them not, men did without quite cheerfully. Sydney Smith once enumerated all the improvements he had lived to see, and then added, with his keen irony, that he was ashamed to think how perfectly happy and contented he used to be before any of them were invented. That is the bare truth ; all the mere superficial improvements matter little or nothing. What matters are the things of the spirit. When we can touch the spirit, but not till then, let us talk of making a new man in a new world.
Any one who chooses to think for a moment can see proof of what we are saying, even if he combats our assertion that our Lord's words changed the universe. Suppose for a moment that the wildest dreams of science come true,—that the air becomes as easily navigable as the sea, and is cut by thousands of aerial keels ; that new discoveries in hygiene make men live a hundred and fifty years; that disease is almost banished ; and that a thousand facilities are added to the conduct of life by the gift of science. Now, can any one seriously declare that under such conditions man and the world would be in reality very much changed,. that he would think more deeply than Socrates, or live more nobly than St. Francis of Assisi or John Wesley, or that he would be less liable to passion and error than the man of to-day ? Would the Röntgen rays, even when finally developed, fulfil "the splendid purpose in his eyes," or beef by chemical process take the deceit from his heart and the lie from his lips ? A thousand times "No." They might make us live longer and multiply more freely, but nothing more. Now, consider what would happen if by any chance those who are now trying to investigate the phenomena of the soul and its operations should be able to show mankind beyond doubt that they had negatived the materialistic explanation of the universe, had proved to demonstration the continued existence of the spirit after death, and had made the world beyond the grave, and the possibility of communicating therewith, a matter of certainty, not of conjecture. No doubt that may be a wild hypothesis, and we do not state it because we think it likely to happen, but merely by way of assumption. Still, supposing these spiritual discoveries were made positive facts, can any one doubt for an instant that the effect on man would be infinitely greater than those which could be produced by any conceivable material improvement or by any of the gifts of applied chemistry ? The certain knowledge of another world would indeed make a new man and a new world. Flying-machines would no more alter the world than did steam. The day after their invention they would be sneered at as "improved balloons," while the " process " chops and steaks would be criticised as nothing but "our old friend Parish's chemical food made in a solid form and cut into lengths." Who can pretend that if an after-life were to become as demonstrable as the movement of the planets, mankind would ever be the same ?
But in truth we need not labour the point. We doubt not that those who see deepest into the mysteries of Nature, the true men of science, will feel just as we feel in regard to the preposterous claim put forward by M. Berthelot on behalf of applied science. They will feel with us that his attitude is nothing but superstitiona,—the parody of faith, the render- ing of religious veneration to that which is unworthy of such an offering. As Mr. Stevenson pointed out to his materialist friend in the steerage, the passionate production of improved steam-engines does not really tend to increase human happi- ness or greatness. Even if we take far lower ground than we have yet chosen, those who can tell us-
" What makes a nation happy, keeps it so, What ruins kingdoms and lays cities fiat "— i.e., the lawgiver and the statesman—do far more for mankind than the inventor. Better a wholesome polity with oil lamps than "a pocket edition of hell" with a nobler installa- tion of electric-light than was ever yet devised by the "Wizard of Menlo Park." Whatever way we look at it, this worship of applied science is pure superstition. Applied science has done much to reduce friction and increase population, and may do more, but she cannot overstep the limits set her. To talk of science making new men in a new world is utterly absurd. Not till she finds out the eanse and meaning of life will she be capable of any such claim. If and when she has done that, but not till then, M. Berthelot may claim what he claims for her without superstition.
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