MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



I am aware that my theory -will meet -with many 

 obstinate and zealous opponents in Italy, since I use 

 the simple terms of reason and science, unqualified 

 l>j other arguments, and I maintain the absolute 

 independence of free thought. Opposition is the 

 more likely since science and freedom have been 

 held responsible for sectarian intemperance, for the 

 disturbances of the lower orders, for the inevitable 

 disasters, the social and intellectual aberrations 

 both of the learned and of the common peoples : 

 science and freedom are held to have repeated the 

 wiles of the serpent in Eden. But I am not uneasy 

 at the thought of such opposition, since the progress 

 of the human race has been owing to the fact that 

 men convinced of the truth took no heed of the super- 

 stitious and interested war waged against them, some- 

 times from ignorance of things in general and of the 

 law which governs civilization, sometimes from honest 

 conviction. 



The falsity of the accusation so generally made 

 against science and freedom will appear if W 7 e con- 

 sider that all the benefits we now enjoy, civil, scientific, 

 and material, and which are especially enjoyed by the 

 men who inveigh most strongly against these two 

 factors, are solely derived from science and freedom. 

 Without them we should be in the civil, intellectual, 

 and material condition of the kingdom of Dahomey, 

 and in the savage and barbarous state of all primitive 

 peoples. If the misunderstanding of truth or an im- 



