Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



which should not be personal and human but 

 absolute and invariable. And the tendency has 

 been (hitherto) in all the sciences to get rid of 

 such terms as blue, red, light, heavy, hot, cold, 

 concord, discord, health, vitality, right, wrong, 

 etc., and to rely on any less human elements dis- 

 coverable in each case ; as for instance in Sound, 

 to deal less and less with the judgments and sen- 

 sations of the ear, and to rely more and more on 

 measurements of lengths of strings, numbers of 

 vibrations, etc. Each science has been (as far 

 as possible) reduced to its lowest terms. Ethics 

 has been made a question of utility and inherited 

 experience. Political Economy has been exhausted 

 of all conceptions of justice between man and man, 

 of charity, affection, and the instinct of solidarity ; 

 and has been founded on its lowest discoverable 

 factor, namely self-interest. Biology has been 

 denuded of the force of personality in plants, 

 animals, and men ; the " self" here has been set 

 aside, and the attempt made to reduce the science 

 to a question of chemical and cellular affinities, pro- 

 toplasm, and the laws of osmose. Chemical affinities, 

 again, and all the wonderful phenomena of Physics 

 are emptied down into a flight of atoms ; and the 

 flight of atoms (and of astronomic orbs as well) 

 is reduced to the laws of dynamics — which the 

 student sitting in his chamber may write down on 

 a piece of paper. Thus the idea, formulated by 

 Comte, of a great scale of sciences arising from 

 the simplest to the most complex, has tacitly under- 

 lain modern scientific work. It — Science — has 



ii6 



