His faith in his mission deserves sincere admiration, and proves him to be one of those earnest enthusiasts who alone can advance humanity. But he does not see that his prophecies regarding future achievements are not science, but faith and religion—based, it is true, on reasonable grounds, but still faith and religion. Nor does he see that his proud asseveration of the achievements of science, and his prophecy with regard to its future, do not constitute a refutation to the cry of the symbolists that science is bankrupt. The promises which the symbolists refer to as being dishonoured by science, are not of the kind that could possibly be redeemed by the achievements referred to in Nordau’s splendid list. They allude to promises not really made by science, but by rash and prejudiced scientists. These have over and over again proclaimed that religion had been supplanted by science, and that science could, or else soon would, explain all those mysteries which religion claimed to explain or to symbolize, such as first causes, final aims, existence or non-existence before birth and after death, the origin of evil, the essence of morality, and so on. Science, according to them, was not only to bring about perfect serenity in man’s mind regarding himself and the universe, but to satisfy the mysterious longings and the uncontrollable emotions, either hereditary, or part of man’s nature, which hitherto religion alone had satisfied. Science was also to supply rational motives for purity, morality, self-sacrifice, and all the virtues and exertions which are indispensable to the elevation of our race. Finally, science was to transform us into an ideal race, living in an ideal manner, thus substituting a terrestrial heaven for humanity, for the spiritual heaven which religion promised for the individual. Nordau cannot blame the scientists who made these promises; for the whole of his book shows that he is in entire sympathy with them. There was a time when the educated world believed in the arrogant promises of the scientists; when it confidently expected that mysteries, so far unexplained, would be cleared up within a reasonable time, and that systems and speculation, which were to take the place of religion, would gradually be so amended as to become capable of fulfilling so great an object. But the rapid scientific discoveries which followed one upon each other, far from tending to fulfil the promises of the scientists, had the effect of persuading the world that science was not going to keep any of these promises. For each mystery it unravelled revealed a series of new mysteries behind it, and the explanatory task of science grew with its own progress. In fact, while the explanations increased by simple arithmetical progression, the mysteries rose up in geometrical progression.