Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/120

 104 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

and manufacturers of weapons of destruction, all ^,he military, the gaolers and executionel-s — all work : but it is obvious that mankind would be better off were these workers to cease working.

But perliaps M. Zola's advice refers only to those whose work is inspired by science. 'ITie greater part of his speech is, in fact, designed to uphold science, which he thinks is being attacked. Vell, it so happens that I am continually receiving +Vom various unappre- ciated authors — pamphlets, maiuiscripts, treatises, and printed books — the outcome of their scientific labours.

One of them has finally solved, so he says, the ques- tion of Christian gnosiology ; anotlier has written a book on the cosmic ether ; a third has settled the social question ; a fifth is editing a theosophical review ; a sixth (in a thick volume) has solved the problem of the Knight's tour at chess.

All these people work assiduously, and work in the name of science, but I do not think I am mistaken in saying that my correspondents' time and work, and the time and work of many other such people, have been spent in a way not merely useless, but even harmful ; for thousands of men are engaged making the paper, casting the type, and manufacturing the presses needed to print their books, and to feed, clothe, and house all these scientific workers.

NV^ork for science ? But the word ' science ' has so large and so ill-defined a meaning that what some con- sider science others consider futile folly ; and this is so, not merely among the profane, but even among men who are themselves priests of science. While one set of the learned esteem jurisprudence, philosophy, and even theology, to be the most necessary and important of sciences, the Positivists consider just those very sciences to be childish twaddle devoid of scientific value. And, vice versa, what the Positivists hold to be the science of sciences, sociology, is regarded by the theologians, the philosophers, and the spiritualists, as a collection of arbitrary and useless observations and assertions. More than this, even in one and the same