20 EMILE BOUTROUX 



data which a science resolutely experimental 

 could not fail to recognize and respect? 



These realities, it is to be noticed, gain their 

 moral and social meaning from the subjective 

 elements which they include. But the func- 

 tion of science is to eliminate the subjective 

 and to resolve it into the objective. She 

 would not, therefore, know how to attribute 

 the slightest value to our aesthetic, moral or 

 religious ideas as we are conscious of them. 

 If, at the present moment, science does not 

 see the way to resolve them completely into 

 objective elements, she thinks such a resolu- 

 tion possible, and the attachment of man to 

 those idols which he has created himself can 

 not be, for her eyes, anything but superstition, 

 routine, error. To sum up the task which 

 science sets before herself, the task which she 

 thinks it both a right and a duty to consider 

 realizable, is to dissolve and to reduce to an 

 infinite number of units of energy entirely 

 physical everything which constitutes the es- 

 sence of man. Her manner of explaining 

 man means suppressing him. When man ate 

 the fruit of the tree of science, he signed. 



