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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



SCIENCE AND WEALTH. 



IT is admitted on all hands that the 

 role of science in the modern world 

 has been a splendid and beneficent one, 

 and that if our present civilization dif- 

 fers for the better in many important 

 respects from that of any preceding age 

 the fact is mainly due to progress in 

 scientific knowledge. The world had 

 greater poets in past times than any it 

 can boast to-day at least this is gen- 

 erally assumed and greater artists and 

 greater metaphysicians ; but who would 

 wish to go back to the age of Shake- 

 speare, or that of Dante, or that of Phid- 

 ias and Plato? We all prefer a world 

 in which an extensive knowledge of natu- 

 ral law prevails, in which natural forces 

 have been bent, as we see them bent to- 

 day, to human uses, and in which man 

 has decisively gained the victory over 

 the principal destructive agencies which 

 once were a constantly recurring menace 

 to his life and happiness. The basis, 

 the firm foundation, of this civilization, 

 which, in spite of any drawbacks at- 

 taching to it, we all prize so highly, is 

 knowledge sifted, verified, definitely 

 acquired knowledge of the laws of na- 

 ture. The adjustments of modern life 

 are dependent in the most absolute 

 manner on the facilities which scien- 

 tific discovery has furnished for the pro- 

 duction and interchange of commodi- 

 ties and for communication between in- 

 dividuals. And just as knowledge ad- 

 vances does society as a whole assume 

 toward its component units more and 

 more the character of an earthly Provi- 

 dence. Comte spoke of it in this char- 

 actor fifty years ago, and, with every 

 passing year, the term becomes more 

 and more appropriate. "Society," says 

 Prof. Toy, in a recent article in the 

 International Journal of Ethics, "has 

 come to be an efficient moral guide and 



support. It has worked out great ideals 

 which have become the heritage of a 

 small but controlling section of the race. 

 It offers great rewards for well-doing, 

 and inflicts terrible punishment for ill- 

 doing. The individual is not a moral 

 orphan in the world; society stands to 

 him in the place of a parent, with all of 

 a parent's power and none of a parent's 

 weaknesses." Society, we may add, aid- 

 ed by science, is every day improving 

 and beautifying the environment into 

 which the individual is born, every day 

 surrounding his life with new safeguards, 

 every day bringing within his reach 

 wider ranges of thought and increased 

 means of enjoyment. 



All this hardly admits of question ; 

 or, if a question were raised, it would 

 probably be not as to the existence of 

 such a general movement as we have 

 described, but as to whether a certain 

 section of society is not more or less 

 cut off from its benefits. That ques- 

 tion doubtless deserves discussion, but 

 we are not concerned with it to-day. 

 What we wish to point out is that, in 

 spite of the vast benefits which natural 

 science is daily conferring on the world, 

 the attitude of many of its principal 

 beneficiaries is not a friendly one. We 

 have heard an amusing but altogether 

 authentic tale of a very wealthy and 

 pious lady who cautioned a friend not 

 to have anything to do with " Christian 

 science," not because it was a system 

 of quackery and delusion, but because 

 it had the word " science " in its des- 

 ignation. " I confess, dear," she said 

 most earnestly, " I don't like that word 

 ' science. 1 " Can such things be, amid 

 the blaze of nineteenth-century enlight- 

 enment? Yes, they can be and are. 

 Not often, perhaps, do we hear the naive 

 confession, " I don't like that word sci- 

 ence " ; but proofs abound that multi- 



