THE GOSPEL OF SCIENCE 13 



" Thou shalt not kill, but needs't not strive 

 Officiously to keep alive." 



Thus wrote Clough ; but our author, it appears, 

 would go further than this. " The preservation 

 of an infant so gravely diseased that it can never 

 be happy or come to any good is something very 

 like wanton cruelty. In private life few men 

 defend such interference" (S. 10). And so 

 such unfortunates should be got rid of, and will 

 be " as soon as scientific knowledge becomes 

 common property " when " views more reason- 

 able, and, I may add, more humane are likely to 

 prevail." Lest we should be depressed by this 

 massacre of the innocents, we are told that " man 

 is just beginning to know himself for what he is 

 a rather long-lived animal, with great powers of 

 enjoyment if he does not deliberately forgo 

 them " (S., p. 9). In the past, poor fool that 

 he has been, he has not availed himself of 

 his opportunities : " Hitherto superstition and 

 mythical ideas of sin have predominantly con- 

 trolled these powers." Let us, however, take 

 heart : " Mysticism will not die out ; for those 

 strange fancies knowledge is no cure ; but their 

 forms may change, and mysticism as a force for 

 the suppression of joy is happily losing its hold 

 on the modern world " (ib., ib.). Let us eat 

 and drink and, it may be added, sin for to- 

 morrow we die. Such is the new gospel of science, 

 an old enough gospel, tried and found wanting 

 years before its latest prophet arose to proclaim 

 it to the world. Surely no more ridiculous utter- 

 ance ever was made ; for its author evidently 



