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 iVUN-ACTLNG 105

branch, whether it be philosophy or iicatural science, each system has its ardent defenders and opponents, just as ardent, equally competent, though maintaining diametrically opposite views.

Lastly, does not each year produce its new scientific discoveries, which, after astonishing the boobies of the whole world, and bringing fame and fortune to tlie inventors, are eventually admitted to be ridiculous mis- takes, even by those wlio promulgated them ?

We all know that what the Romans valued as the greatest science and the most important occupation — that which distinguished them from the barbarians — was rhetoric, which now does not even rank as a science at all. Equally difficult is it to-day to understand the state of mind of tlie learned men of the Middle Ages, who were fully convinced that all science was concen- trated in scholasticism.

Unless, then, our century forms an exception (which is a supposition we have no right to make), it needs no great boldness to conclude, by analogy, that among the kinds of knowledge occupying the attention of our learned men, and called science, there must necessarily be some which will be regarded by our descendants much as we now regard the rhetoric of the ancients and the scholasticism of the Middle Ages.

M. Zola's speech is chiefly directed against certain leaders who are persuading the young generation to return to religious beliefs ; for M. Zola, as champion of science, considers himself an adversary of theirs. Really he is nothing of the sort, for his reasoning rests on the same basis as that of his opponents, namely (as he himself admits), on faith.

It is a generally accepted opinion that religion and science are opposed to one anott^er. And they really are so, but only in point of time ; that is to say, that what is considered science by one generation often becomes religion for their descendants. ^Vhat i^