Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/122

 10(5 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

usually spoken of as religion is generally the science of the past, while what is called science is, to a ^rreat extent, the reli^'-ion of the present.

We say that the assertions of the Hebrews that the world was created in six days ; that sons would be punished for their father's sins ; that certain disea.ses could be cured hy the sight of a serpent, were religious statements ; while the assertions of our contemporaries that the world created itself hy turning round a centre which is everywhere, that all tiie different species arose from the struggle for existence, that criminals are the product of heredity, that micro-organisms, shaped like commas, exist, which cause certain diseases — we call scientific statements. By reverting in imagination to the state of mind of an ancient Hebrew, it becomes easy to see that for him the creation of the world in six days, the serpent that cured diseases, etc., were state- ments of science in accord with its highest stage of development, just as the Darwinian law, Koch's commas, heredity, etc., are for a man of our day.

And just as the Hebrew believed not so much in the creation of tlie world in six days, in the serpent that healed certain diseases, etc., as in the infallibility of his priests, and, therefore, in all that they told him— so to-day the great majority of cultured people believe, not in the formation of the world by rotation, nor in heredity, nor in the comma bacilli, but in the infallibility of the secular priests, called scientists, who, with an assurance equal to that of the Hebrew priests, assert whatever they pretend to know.

I will even go so far as to say that if the ancient priests, controlled by none but their own colleagues, allowed themselves at times to diverge from the path of truth merely for the pleasure of astonishing and mysti- fying their public, our modern priests of science do much the same thing, and do it with equal effrontery.

The greater part of what is called religion is simply the superstition of past ages ; the greater part of what is called science is nothing but the superstition of to-day. And 1 suppose that the proportion of error