1904] Baskerville — Science and the People. 73 



no more replace literature than can a geometric diagram be 

 substituted for a landscape painting. 



Science, to be sure, is destructive of conventions. Freedom is 

 the breath of science, and the unshackled movement of bound- 

 less human curiosity must effect literature. Men of science 

 look not pleasantly upon their scavenging camp followers, 

 who, riotous in thought, indulge in a license of speech which 

 provokes quite justly those who conscientiously differ from 

 them, and unfortunately inculcates ideas in those unable to 

 winnow the chaff from the grain. 



Thus it may be seen that modern science makes for purity 

 and genuineness. There is nothing more abhorrent to a man of 

 science than the pretenses of a scientific mountebank. This 

 elevation is dual in its effect, general and local. As an evi- 

 dence of the former there have resulted ameliorated conditions 

 of society by protecting food from harmful adulterations, 

 improved sanitation, better and more reasonable treatment for 

 diseases, general distribution of the products of wealth among 

 all civilized peoples, and in many other ways too numerous to 

 mention. A reader after Count Tolstoy and his ''recognition 

 of the bankruptcy of experimental science," can not but be 

 impressed with his earnestness, and yet feel that he looks only 

 very close at home when he writes: "The men of science of 

 our time think and speak and the crowds follow them, while 

 at the same time there was never a period or a people among 

 whom science in its complete significance stood on so low a 

 level as our science to-day. One part of it, that which should 

 study what makes life of man good and happy, is occupied in 

 justifying the existing evil conditions, while another part 

 spends its time solving questions of idle curiosity." He does 

 not apparently realize that science promotes a certain contin- 

 uity of ideas, as well as the intellectual and moral education of 

 the nations. 



"There exist, indeed and always will exist, many deplor- 

 able things, much suffering, and much wickedness in the 

 world; but it is to the credit of science that, instead of lulling 



