Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/542

 theory of "science for science's sake," according to which science studies, not what is necessary to men, but everything.

Indeed, experimental science does study everything, only not in the sense of the totality of objects, but in the sense of disorder and chaos in the distribution of the investigated subjects, i.e. science does not most investigate what is most needed by men, less what is less needed, and not at all what is not needed, but investigates, haphazard, anything it comes across. Although there do exist classifications of the sciences by Comte and others, these classifications do not direct the choice of subjects for investigation, this being directed by human weaknesses inherent in men of science as in all men.

So that in reality experimental scientists do not, as they imagine and assert, study everything, but that which is more advantageous and easier for them to study. It is more advantageous to study what may contribute to the welfare of those higher classes to which the men occupied with science themselves belong, and it is easier to study things devoid of life. And this is what the investigators of experimental science do: they study books, monuments, and dead bodies, and this study they regard as the most real science.

So that what in our time is regarded as the true and only "science" (in the sense that the "Bible" was once called the only book worthy of the name) is not the investigation of how to make the life of men better and happier, but consists in collecting and copying out of many books into one what was written concerning a certain subject by former men, or in pouring liquids from one vial into another, in skilfully dissecting microscopic preparations, in cultivating bacteria, in cutting up frogs and dogs, in investigating the X-rays, the chemical composition of the stars, and so forth.

And all those sciences the object of which is to make human life better and happier—religious, moral, and social sciences—are not regarded as sciences by the reigning science, and are relegated to the theologians, philosophers, jurists, historians, and political economists, who