Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/501

Rh Brassey, great captains of labor, who led men not only over Europe, but over every quarter of the globe, and changed the whole face of the earth by their vast engineering power and skill." Not being a "materialist," this is the kind of science his lordship likes best. Next, there is a class of scientific men who accept "material philosophy and scientific teaching as their surest and safest standard and guide.... but whose minds were nevertheless open to other considerations, and who did not feel it was the sole and exclusive standard of their lives." As science tempered by "other considerations" would be acceptable to Pope Pius himself, we need not be surprised that to this Lord Carnarvon has no objection. It is for a third class of scientific men he reserves his denunciation. There is, it appears, a class—if, indeed, so small a body of men can be called a class—who carry the scientific frame of mind "into the complex relations of human life, into politics and social philosophy, and into all the relations which affect men toward one another." The influence of this little class is growing, Lord Carnarvon tells us; and we are convinced that he is right. Now, at this he is very much terrified. If only those naughty scientific men would keep to engineering and physics, his lordship would not care; but what he objects to is "the application of those rules, which naturally and rightly govern abstract science, to legislation, morals, social life." In other words, scientific men may settle the distance of the sun from the earth at what figure they like, and they may build bridges and construct railroads; but, if they apply the same logical processes which they have found serve them so well in the material world to the solution of social and political problems, this is really too much for patrician nerves. There is a hardness about the scientific method which Lord Carnarvon does not like. If it were not for this diabolical device, we might come to any conclusions on social matters which fit in with our predilections or interests; but, with the "grinding, rigid despotism" of logic, this is impossible. All that manly independence of our premissespremises [sic] which occasionally characterizes our conclusions on political matters would be gone forever, and "one intellectual power" would "exert an exclusive rule over" us.

Lord Carnarvon did not content himself with a mere depreciation of social and political science, but attempted to point out its shortcomings. It is, he thinks, "devoid of the milk of human kindness." This is quite true, and a much wider truth than stated. It is as true of the multiplication-table as of scientific politics. But, when Lord Carnarvon, showing a little of that individual freedom which he despairs of keeping, argues that, because science is "no safeguard or guarantee of itself for tenderness and affection," therefore, those who are thoroughly imbued with the scientific spirit trample on and despise affection and tenderness for their fellow-creatures, he is appealing to one of the most foolish of prejudices in support of one of the most disingenuous of arguments. The love of truth, for its own sake,