TO THE POOR. 249 



things; all the evil of this social hell, of far greater 

 dimensions than the social elysium which modern society 

 also contains in its midst, can Science do nothing to 

 check, or to cure, or to mitigate it ? 



Can Science help us to stem this tide of social human 

 misery, the greater part of it, including the crime and 

 vice, being directly traceable to poverty alone, or to the 

 blunted feelings, the perverted moral perceptions and 

 despair, produced by poverty, while the fact itself of 

 poverty, is, as the socialists contend, the necessary result 

 of our present social and industrial system, our economi- 

 cally consecrated regime of competition and individualism, 

 and of the social injustice which lies at the root of it ? 

 Can Science help us to check or control the causes which 

 produce all this misery ? Can she aid to diminish the 

 gulf, ever deepening and dangerous, between rich and 

 poor ; the monstrous and growing contrast between 

 misery and luxury; between the gilded splendour and 

 perfume, the pomp and pride, the varnished vices and 

 forgiven sins of the elect of the social heaven on one side, 

 and on the other the dismal dwellings and privation 

 and hunger, the squalor and stench, the disease and 

 drunkenness, the unforgiven sins and shames of the 

 unfortunates of the social Inferno, which stretches wide 

 and hopeless outside the gates of the social Paradise ? 

 Can Science, we ask, help us here ? And if she cannot, 

 of what avail her other services and gifts to men, which 

 are ever intercepted and monopolized by these same 

 wealthy who already have, to the further detriment of 

 those who have not ? If this gospel of Science is not for 

 alj. mankind, if it is not "the gospel to the poor," as 

 Christianity, though perverted from its Founder's purpose, 

 was meant to be, of what use is the message, and to 

 what purpose all the vain noise and blowing of trumpets ? 



