Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/541

 subject to investigation, and cannot choose the objects of its study. Science studies everything. Such is the nature of science."

Men of science are indeed convinced that the characteristic of attending to trifles and neglecting things more substantial and important is not their own characteristic, but that of science. But the simple, sensible man begins to suspect that this characteristic belongs, not to science, but to those who are inclined to occupy themselves with trifles, attaching to these trifles great importance.

"Science studies everything," say the men of science. But there is too much of everything. Everything means an infinite quantity of objects, and it is impossible to study all at once. As a lantern cannot light up everything but only the place it is directed toward, so also science cannot investigate everything, but inevitably investigates only that to which its attention is directed. And as the lantern throws the strongest light on the place nearest to it, weaker and weaker light on more remote objects, and does not light up at all those objects which its light cannot reach; so also human science, of whatever kind, has always investigated and is investigating in most detail that which appears to the investigators to be most important, studying in less detail what appears to them less important, and not at all concerning itself with all the remaining infinite quantity of objects.

The standard which has defined and defines for men the very important, the less important, and the unimportant is men's general understanding of the sense and object of life, i.e. religion.

But our modern men of science, not acknowledging any religion,—and therefore possessing no basis upon which they might select objects for study according to the degree of their importance, separating the most important from the less important, and from that vast number of objects which will always remain uninvestigated because of the limitations of the human mind and their infinite quantity,—have invented for themselves a