Robert Louis Stevenson and his Work-Mr. Stevenson's Poetry-Mr. Stevenson as an Essayist—'The Wrecker' THE SUPERSTITIONS OF SCIENCE WE have no quarrel with the men of science, for they do a great deal to make life easier, pleasanter, and more interesting. We cannot, however, help observing that they are among the most superstitious of mankind. Their faith in chimæras, their readiness to be run away with by words, their tendency to take the part for the whole, and to worship blindly and perversely at their own little shrine is often perfectly astounding. Not only are they sure that what they know not is not knowledge'; but they hold that science when applied to life is producing an absolute revolution in the world and altering man's position in the universe. Only let science have a little more time to apply its discoveries, and the earth will be a completely different place. That is the attitude of many of the natural philosophers of the present day. M. Berthelot, the great French chemist, and his brother men of science lately indulged in an orgy of this kind of talk. At a great International Congress of Applied Chemistry held in Paris M. Berthelot 1 Of course, when we say 'they' we only mean the conventionally minded men of science, and not the greater minds who learn humility, not cocksureness, from the sight of that vast ocean by whose shore they pick up their pebbles. |