THE ASSUMED BENEVOLENCE OF SCIENCE.
WE know of few recent incidents more striking than the ready and, except among gas-shareholders, the pleased reception I which was given in this country to the assertion—for as yet it is no more—of Mr. Edison's success in dividing the electric light. Here was another victory for Science, another step in man's con- quest over nature, another demonstration of the mighty things that Thought, properly directed, might one day achieve. Here was a natural force, reduced to do, in a fresh department, the bidding of the human race. The happiness, or at all events the content, of all men capable of understanding the subject at all was visibly increased, and a momentary radiance sat upon all cultivated faces. The cause of that exultation is worth studying for a moment, if only because exultation, what with the state of trade, and new taxes, and Lord Beaconsfield's muddles, is just now grow- ing so infrequent. There is pride in it, of course, for man's distinctive quality being mind, he sympathises as by instinct with any clear victory of mind over matter ; even the Oriental, who thinks not of science, exulting in stories of the power of magic, which is his highest notion of mind, over inanimate forces. This particular triumph, too, is very
exciting to the imagination. Harnessing lightning to carry messages is a triumph, but an invisible one ; but the lightning steadily lighting up a studio or a boudoir is like a fine horse in harness,—a slave that can be seen. We do not quite know why the pride should be so vigorous, for the man who discovered fire did more than Edison, and was probably not great after all ; lower, it is nearly certain, than an average Esquimaux ; but the pride undoubtedly is there. There is, however, also another feel- ing in the pleasure experienced, much more subtle and much more worthy study, a kind of gratification nearly akin to that roused by any manifestation of friendship. The man of the middle- ages looked on Science, or knowledge applied to vanquish in- animate forces, as something uncanny, weird, hostile, or at all events eminently disagreeable ; and regarded the person who sought that knowledge as a person to be imprisoned, or pelted, or if he was very successful, burnt. He must derive his know- ledge from the Enemy—God having arranged matters so differently —and the Enemy's servants were to be abhorred. The experience of the last hundred years, however, has not only completely removed this feeling, but it has reversed it, till men have come to look upon Science as a potent ally, who is and always will be on their side. She is a mighty friend, always stepping out of the blue to give them something which conduces to comfort, now a lucifer- match and now a steam-engine, and again a diffusible light, and by-and-by an anmsthetic conquering pain, and now a light at once diffusible and searching and cheap. She may one day give a substitute for food, or a true pain-killer, such as the one which Mr. Edison is already said, apparently on no evidence at all, to have invented ; or an elixir of health, or a drug yielding a per- manent tendency to happiness, such as alcohol gives momently to a few constitutions. At all events, Science is a friend, and a power- ful friend, and one asking nothing, not even gratitude, saving our money indeed, instead of spending it, and altogether unexception- able ; and those who study Science, so far from being burnt, are wor- shipped, till ins generation or two the word "wizard," already a nick- name creating an expectation for amusement, may be among the most honorific of terms. In one more generation, Professors may be priests, and students in the natural-science classes take the place of students in divinity. So completely dead is the notion that Science can be malefic or malignant, that people would hardly be- lieve in an injurious discovery, and that a mild suggestion of our own that cheap electric lights might increase human toil strikes them as odd, and if not slightly blasphemous, at all events ungrateful. It is like supposing that an ally who has brigaded his troops with ours has an ultimate intention of plunder ; it should not be said aloud. Science is clearly benevolent, not to say good-natured, and any doubt thrown on her kindness has something in it offensive. Yet there can hardly be a doubt that the Professors of Science might discover something which would be as injurious to man as the art of the chemist was in the middle-ages popularly supposed to be. Man did not benefit entirely by the work of that early brain which detected the pro- perties of alcohol, or that later one which devised the extract of wormwood known as absinthe, or by the discovery of datum, or of one or two other drugs known to herbalists and great physicians ; and the discovery of a universally obtainable poison leaving no trace, a poison which probably exists, would not increase the happiness of mankind. An easy means of throwing fire from a distance would probably be most injurious, and so would the discovery of any method of causing an enormous destruction of men in battle, which yet could be kept by its inventor in the hands of a single Government. The temptation to domi- nate the world would be almost too great, yet this very thing nearly happened in the case of Greek Fire. Had the Romans in their highest vigour possessed it, resistance would have been nearly impossible ; as it would be now if one nation, and one only, could from its guns fling pain as well as death, or scatter asphyxiating clouda,—the secret popularly attributed to "Long- range Warner." Science gives only power, and not only may power fall into bad hands, as well as good, but there are certain kinds of power which principally tempt the bad. A perfect method of extinguishing writing so as to leave the paper unimpaired would produce, and could produce, little but mischief; while any discovery which placed means of destruction in the hands of all men—the application of electricity, for example, as a destroying agent at a distance—would double the tremor of mankind. A very short step further forward in our control of fulminates might place awful means of destruction in all hands, bad and good, responsible and irresponsible, and we might have as many cities destroyed as ricks are now fired. Indeed such a discovery could hardly be kept from the knowledge of Govern- ments like the Chinese, which, to judge from their proceedings in Kasbgar, would not hesitate to extirpate the human race in order that Chinamen might be comfortable. Faraday had an idea, it is said, that it would be well if the secret of the decomposition of water were not discovered, as the power so gained might not be wisely used ; and though the story may be nonsense, any power that, requiring skill and self- restraint for its use, was yet placed in the bands of all men would probably not be beneficial, would certainly not tend to that elevation in comfort which the popular mind permanently expects from Science. Imagine the power of firing water dis- covered, made public from excellent motives, as in a patriotic war, and so becoming the property of a world in which one man in a thousand is probably a crypto-lunatic, anxious, above all things, for a supreme sensation. A discovery, quite possible, of the means of dissolving brick or stone within a definite area into pulp would materially interfere with the security of all property, as would for a time the realisation of the Middle-Age Alchemists' dream. All these discoveries would, of course, to do mischief, require the aid of human malignity, in a consciously malignant state, but others are quite conceivable over which will would have no control. Suppose, for example, Sir G. Airey were to discover that a change had occurred in space, which within, say, a century or two would affect our universe, and in- evitably draw the world out of its orbit, thereby pulverising it to atoms ; the effect of that discovery, fatal as it would be to fore- sight, to patriotism, to that long series of good impulses which have for their unconscious motor the belief that the human race will last, could be nothing but evil. Half the motives to energy and to self-restraint would disappear at once, while the tempta- tion to use up the world, its forests, coal mines, and resources generally, would be enormously exaggerated. Humanity would realise its mortality, and make the best—that is, the worst —of its time. Not one of these suggestions, however, -or many other much better ones which might be offered, will come in the least home to the minds of men taught by a few years' experience that Science is kind, that knowledge is bene- ficial, and that every victory over the forces of Nature tends to the comfort of man.
Is it all experience, or is it that the decay of the belief in the hard side of Providence of which we spoke a fortnight ago, though regrettable from its causeleasness, has this one compensation,—that while fear has diminished, confidence in the providential govern- ment of the world has increased ? Certainly the notion that "all -things work together for good," if it has not sunk deeper, has dif- fused itself over a much wider area, till it has become an uncon- scious basis of most of the thought excited by new events. We do not mean that the word " good " is any better interpreted than of old. On the contrary, as we have so often argued, the interpretation tends to a certain baseness ; but the belief in the " good " of a low and terrestrial kind has become stronger, till,
for one thing, all discovery is expected to be beneficial, and men expect unconsciously that there never can be a dangerous apple plucked from the Tree of Knowledge. That is an assumption which makes life cheerful, but has, we are afraid, no base.
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