Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/238

 222 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

are people who spend their lives in study, whom he feeds and keeps while they think for liim — then no douht these men are engaged in studying? things men need to know ; and he expects of science that it will solve for liim the questions on which his welfare, and that of all men, depends. He expects science to tell him how he ouglit to live : how to treat his family, his neighhours and the men of other tribes, how to re- strain his passions, what to believe in and what not to believe in, and much else. And what does our science say to him on these matters ?

It triumphantly tells him : liow many million mile^ it is from the earth to the sun ; at what rate light travels through space ; how many million vibrations of ether per second are caused by light, and liow many vibrations of air by sound ; it tells of the chemical components of the Milky ^^'ay, of a new element — helium — of micro-organisms and their excrements, of the points on the hand at which electricity collects, of X rays, and similar things.

' But I don't want any of those things,' says a plain and reasonable man — ' want to know how to live.'

' What does it matter what you want }' replies science. ' Aliat you are asking about relates to Sociology. He- fore replying to sociological questions, we have yet to solve questions of Zoology, Botany, Physiology, and, in general, of Biology ; but to solve those questions we have first to solve questions of Physics, and then of Chemistry, and have also to agree as to the shape of the infinitesimal atoms, and how it is that imponderable and incompressible ether transmits energy.'

And people — chiefly those who sit on the backs of others, and to whom it is therefore convenient to wait — are content with such replies, and sit blinking, await- ing the fulfilment of these promises ; but a plain and reasonable working man — such as those on whose backs these others sit while occupying themselves with science — the whole great mass of men, the whole of humanity, cannot be satisfied by such answers, but naturally ask