CHAPTER XVI. 



MORAL EFFECTS OF SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. 



BUT the preceding description may leave as a main im- 

 pression on the reader's mind that the promoters of science 

 have been agents of material welfare, and little more; and 

 as material welfare does not after all constitute the best 

 part of a high civilisation, he may doubt whether science 

 has contributed much to the development of the moral and 

 intellectual condition of modern Europe ; he may vaguely 

 suspect that the deep sentiments which animate us nowadays 

 with regard to religion, religious and political government, 

 justice, truth, virtue, philanthropy, humanity, devotedness 

 have sprung from other sources than science. It therefore 

 behoves us to demonstrate that science has been the chief 

 fount from which moral and intellectual progress has flowed. 

 Not that science has been the sole source. By no means. 

 That the Christian idea, sown broadcast for ages, had 

 exercised a vast and beneficent influence, despite the 

 superstition, the craftiness, the craving for wealth and power 

 of its Roman ministers, is too obvious a fact to be dis- 

 puted for a moment.* Its essential doctrines charity and 

 godliness had sunk deep into the heart of many, and 

 nurtured Europe for a higher civilisation ; they had even 

 produced, and shown to the world, model men whose lives 

 and characters would compare with the highest poetical 

 ideals. But the spiritual force of those doctrines and 

 those men was buried alive, so to speak, under the weight 

 * See pages 47, 65. 



