Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/235

 XVII MODERN SCIENCE*

TravTi Xoy^i yog tcrot; dj/rf/celrat.f

1 THINK this article of Carpenter's on Modern Science should be particularly useful in Russian society, in which, more than in any other in P^urope, a supersti- tion is prevalent and deeply rooted which considers tliat humanity for its welfare does not need the diffusion of true relij^■ious and moral knowled^^e, but only the study of experimental science, and that such science will satisfy all the spiritual demands of mankind.

It is evident how harmful an influence (quite like that of religious superstition) so gross a superstition must have on men's moral life. And, therefore, the publication of the thoughts of writers who treat experi- mental science and its method critically is specially desirable in our society.

Carpenter shows that neither Astronomy, nor Physics, nor Chemistry, nor Biology, nor Sociology, supplies us with true knowledge of actual facts ; that all the laws discovered by those sciences are merely generalizations, having but an approximate value as laws, and that only as long as we do not know, or leave

Sergius Tolstoy, of Edward Carpenter's essay, Modern Science : a Criticism, which forms part of the volume Civilization : its Cause and Cure, published by Swan Sonnenschein and Co., London.
 * Written as preface to a Russian ti'anslation, by Count

t To every argument an equal argument is matched. [ 219 ]