Somebody has been making a speech, reported at a couple of columns'
length in the paper. As I glance down the waste of print, one word
catches my eye again and again. It's all about "science"--and therefore
doesn't concern me.
I wonder whether there are many men who have the same feeling with regard
to "science" as I have? It is something more than a prejudice; often it
takes the form of a dread, almost a terror. Even those branches of
science which are concerned with things that interest me--which deal with
plants and animals and the heaven of stars--even these I cannot
contemplate without uneasiness, a spiritual disaffection; new
discoveries, new theories, however they engage my intelligence, soon
weary me, and in some way depress. When it comes to other kinds of
science--the sciences blatant and ubiquitous--the science by which men
become millionaires--I am possessed with an angry hostility, a resentful
apprehension. This was born in me, no doubt; I cannot trace it to
circumstances of my life, or to any particular moment of my mental
growth. My boyish delight in Carlyle doubtless nourished the temper, but
did not Carlyle so delight me because of what was already in my mind? I
remember, as a lad, looking at complicated machinery with a shrinking
uneasiness which, of course, I did not understand; I remember the sort of
disturbed contemptuousness with which, in my time of "examinations," I
dismissed "science papers." It is intelligible enough to me, now, that
unformed fear: the ground of my antipathy has grown clear enough. I hate
and fear "science" because of my conviction that, for long to come if not
for ever, it will be the remorseless enemy of mankind. I see it
destroying all simplicity and gentleness of life, all the beauty of the
world; I see it restoring barbarism under a mask of civilization; I see
it darkening men's minds and hardening their hearts; I see it bringing a
time of vast conflicts, which will pale into insignificance "the thousand
wars of old," and, as likely as not, will whelm all the laborious
advances of mankind in blood-drenched chaos.
Yet to rail against it is as idle as to quarrel with any other force of
nature. For myself, I can hold apart, and see as little as possible of
the thing I deem accursed. But I think of some who are dear to me, whose
life will be lived in the hard and fierce new age. The roaring "Jubilee"
of last summer was for me an occasion of sadness; it meant that so much
was over and gone--so much of good and noble, the like of which the world
will not see again, and that a new time of which only the perils are
clearly visible, is rushing upon us. Oh, the generous hopes and
aspirations of forty years ago! Science, then, was seen as the
deliverer; only a few could prophesy its tyranny, could foresee that it
would revive old evils and trample on the promises of its beginning. This
is the course of things; we must accept it. But it is some comfort to me
that I--poor little mortal--have had no part in bringing the tyrant to
his throne.