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fear it would take its tone from the pessimism of Paris, Berlin,
London, and St. Petersburg, unless it brought into sight some new
and hitherto unsuspected path for civilization to pursue.
If
it pointed toward a socialistic triumph it would place us in
an attitude of hostility toward existing institutions. Even suppos·
ing that our universities would permit their professors in this coun·
try to announce the scientific certainty of communistic triumphs,
could Europe be equally liberal? Would property, on which the
universities depend, allow such freedom of instruction? Would
the state suffer its foundation to be destroyed? Would society as
now constituted tolerate the open assertion of a necessity which
should affirm its approaching overthrow?
If,
on the other hand, the new science required us to announce
that the present evils of the world-its huge armaments, its vast
accumulations of capital, its advancing materialism, and declining
arts-were to be continued, exaggerated, over another thousand
years, no one would listen to us with satisfaction. Society would
shut its eyes and ears.
If
we proved the certainty of our results we
should prove it without a sympathetic audience and without good
effect. No one except artists and socialists would listen, and the
conviction which we should produce on them could lead only to
despair and attempts at anarchy in art, in thought, and in society.
If,
finally, the science should prove that society must at a
given time revert to the church and recover its old foundation of
absolute faith in a personal providence and a revealed religion, it
commits suicide.
In whatever direction we look we can see no possibility of
converting history into a science without bringing it into hostility
toward one or more of the most powerful organizations of the era.
If
the world is to continue moving toward the point which it has so
energetically pursued during the last fifty years, it will destroy the
hopes of the vast organizations of labor.
If
it is to change its course
and become communistic, it places us in direct hostility to the
entire fabric of our social and political system.
If
it goes on, we
must preach despair.
If
it goes back, it must deny and repudiate
science.
If
it goes forward, round a circle which leads through
communism, we must declare ourselves hostile to the property that
pays us and the institutions we are bound in duty to support.
A science cannot be played with.
If
an hypothesis is advanced
