Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/539

 object. This self-delusion is partly exposed by Carpenter's criticism, which, in the first place points out that the knowledge science gives us in the sphere of natural science consists only of convenient modes of generalization, which by no means express actual facts; and secondly, that the method of science by which the phenomena of a higher order are reduced to the phenomena of a lower order, will never enable us to arrive at an explanation of the phenomena of the higher order.

But without settling beforehand the question whether the method of the experimental sciences can or cannot achieve a solution of the problems of life most important for humanity, the activity itself of the experimental sciences, considered in relation to the eternal and most legitimate demands of humanity, impresses one by its fallacy.

Men must live. And in order to live they must know how to live. All men always—well or ill—have learnt this, and in accordance with their knowledge, have lived and progressed. And this knowledge of how men should live has always, since the times of Moses, Solon, Confucius, been considered a science—the very science of sciences; and it is only in our time that it has begun to be considered that the science of how to live is not a science at all, but that true science is only experimental science, beginning with mathematics and ending with sociology.

And a strange misunderstanding ensues.

A simple and sensible working-man—according to the old sense and common sense as well—supposes that if there are men studying all their lives, and who think for him in return for being fed and provided for by him, then these men are probably engaged in studying what is needful for man, and he expects from science that it will solve for him those questions on which depend his welfare and that of all men. He expects that science will teach him how to live; how to act toward the members of his own family, his neighbors, and those of other countries; how to struggle with his passions;