Page:Justice in war time by Russell, Bertrand.djvu/43

Rh men for the destructive work of the battlefield. Man's greater command over Nature has only magnified the disaster, because it has not been accomplished by greater command over his own passions. And if he does not acquire command over his own passions, whatever destruction is not achieved now is only postponed to a later day.

The degradation of science from its high function in ameliorating the lot of man is one of the most painful aspects of the war. Savage man, like the brutes, lives in bondage to matter: the task of securing a bare subsistence absorbs his energies, leaving no leisure for art and thought and the goods of the mind. From this bondage science has been progressively liberating the populations of civilized countries. One man's labour now will produce a great deal more than one man's food. Out of the time set free in this way have grown literature and music, poetry and philosophy, amid the intoxicating triumphs of science itself. On the basis of the greater productivity of labour, education, democracy, and all the political advances of the modern State have been built. Suddenly, now, because a madness of destruction has swept over Europe, the men of science have abandoned their beneficent activities : physicists invent swifter aircraft, chemists devise more deadly explosives, and almost all who can, devote themselves to the labour of death. The place of science in human development, one is compelled to think, has never become present to their minds, since they are willing to prostitute it to the undoing of its own work.

Knowledge with elevation of mind is the chief instrument of human progress; knowledge without