250 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CEEED OF SCIENCE. 



If Science cannot aid to mitigate the evident miseries of 

 the many, if she can only offer us the continued operation 

 of natural selection as a panacea for our admitted social 

 griefs, whence all the jubilations, and why should men 

 of science indulge in optimistic boasts ? If the poverty 

 of the majority forbids even the most elementary con- 

 ditions of happiness, the first necessaries of life, were it 

 not honester for Science and Evolution to acknowledge 

 the case of the pessimist as proved, and keep a little 

 quiet, leaving to men not yet prepared to accept the 

 pessimist solution nor yet the satisfied conclusion of the 

 rich that " the poor will never cease in the land," some 

 other way than by scientific counsel of working out their 

 own earthly salvation ? 



The practical problem for Science in the sphere of 

 society is, according to the socialist, to find a means 

 of curing or mitigating poverty, and the miseries, alone 

 deserving compassion, that flow from it. Can she find a 

 remedy other than the slow one of natural selection, 

 which is, in fact, neither cure nor consolation for the 

 present generation of sufferers, which at best seems little 

 more than a consecration, in the name of Science, of the 

 evils complained of, or an assurance to the victims who 

 are not selected that their sacrifice is for the future good 

 of society. We do not demand of Science, says the 

 socialist, that she should perform the miracle of remedying 

 evils which are a necessary part of the universal human 

 heritage and destiny, as sorrow, sickness, disappointment, 

 or death, but only that she should aid us to remove or 

 lessen want and poverty, with the long and disastrous 

 train of evils that thence proceeds, which things we 

 maintain are curable. We admit that even if Science 

 could or would show us undoubtedly the true scientific 

 causes of these, it would be something, even though her 



