378 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



longer expect to work miracles, but we do expect and hope by 

 wisely concerted measures to accomplish better and greater results 

 than were ever accomplished by the enthusiasms and fanaticisms 

 of the past. Miss Cobbe says that " the man of science may be 

 anxious to abolish vice and crime, . . . but he has no longing to 

 enthrone in their place a lofty virtue demanding his heart and 

 life's devotion. He is almost as much disturbed by extreme good- 

 ness as by wickedness." Is not this weak and almost meaning- 

 less language ? What is meant by " enthroning a lofty virtue " in 

 the place of vice and crime ? The phrase has a fine sound, but it 

 seems to be a case of prceterea nihil. What a man of science 

 would like to see would be a society organized and governed ac- 

 cording to the best knowledge of the time. He would like to see 

 the laws of life and health respected, justice maintained among 

 men, and free scope given to individual development. As to the 

 lofty virtue which Miss Cobbe so strongly desiderates, the scien- 

 tific man would like to do away with the necessity for it by a 

 general leveling up of human life. He believes, with Jean 

 Jacques Rousseau, that i)rudence is a virtue which enables us to 

 dispense with many others ; and that, if the human race could be 

 taught prudence, great reformers and missionaries might have an 

 easy time of it, and perhaps be enabled to practice a little of their 

 charity at home — an excellent starting-point, according to the 

 proverb. The scientific man's ideal is necessarily a prosperous 

 community of fairly self-sufficing individuals, not a world of 

 misery lightened by the angel visitations and exertions of a few 

 heroic souls. Some may think bis ambition a low one, but he 

 does not feel it to be so himself ; he does not really see how any 

 one who wishes well to the mass of his fellow-men can have any 

 different ambition. 



"Another threatening evil from the side of science is the 

 growth of a hard and pitiless temper." So Miss Cobbe ; and this 

 in face of the fact that never in the history of the world was there 

 so much sympathy with suffering, or so ready a recognition of 

 the rights of humanity, as there is to-day. Reference is made to 

 certain vague charges brought in an anonymous book against 

 hospital physicians and students; but, even admitting these 

 charges as true in some substantial measure — and we should be 

 sorry to do so without further proof — no good reason can be as- 

 signed for charging on the scientific world at large a morbid tem- 

 per displayed by a few representatives of one single profession. 

 Compare the average practicing physician of to-day with the 

 Slops and Sangrados of former times, and we fancy there is no 

 visible falling off in humanity or any other respectable quality. 

 What can not be denied is that science has done a great work in 

 mitigating suffering and lengthening human life; and it would 



