The “Bankruptcy of Science” is a term which has become common to European literature since M. Brunetiere first scandalised the naive ingenuous persons who accepted empiricism as a new religion. And, in a large movement of popular opinion, mankind has turned with some indignation and some regret from a method which has proved altogether inadequate to the immense hopes that it once excited amongst its first admirers. The greatness of the disappointment is proportioned to the greatness of the promise. The accusation--in its popular form--is an unfair one. Natural science, as such, makes no claim to remedy human ills; makes no claim, indeed, to exercise any kind of influence upon human life at all. It does not reveal, and it does not profess to reveal, the secret and meaning of the Universe. That is the function of a metaphysic. It does not labour in aid of religion, art, economic equality, or social comfort. It does not labour against them. It leaves them alone. These are outside its province. There is no possibility through investigations in the higher mathematics, of solving the problem of the injustices of human fortune. There is no prospect through examination of the brains of dead animals to discover or disprove the existence of the human soul. There is no promise, by however subtle elaboration of mechanical invention, permanently to better the lot of those poor who in every variation of human society are always living near the margin of what is humanly endurable. Such disabilities are no charge against human reason, concentrated upon investigation of the nature of the material Universe. They are a charge, if charge at all, against the somewhat too sanguine dreamers who asserted that through human reason, in investigation of the nature of the material Universe, mankind would finally achieve secrets which would make them rivals of the older gods. The large hopes and dreams of the Early Victorian time have vanished: never, at least in the immediate future, to return. The science which was to allay all diseases, the commerce which was to abolish war, and weave all nations into one human family, the research which was to establish ethics and religion on a secure and positive foundation, the invention which was to enable all humanity, with a few hours of not disagreeable work every day, to live for the remainder of their time in ease and sunshine--all these have become recognised as remote and fairy visions. One man now produces--by the aid of machinery--what a thousand could but hardly produce a century ago. “Argosies of commerce” post over land and ocean without rest. Not two but two hundred blades of grass grow where one blade grew before. Factories and furnaces, in never-ceasing activity, vomit forth ever more elaborate products, clothing, furniture, houses, implements of brass and steel, by methods which would have excited wonder and worship in earlier, simpler ages. Yet ten millions,