The prevention and treatment of disease, which for long was in the hands of religious authorities, is now passing into the care of those who employ the methods of scientific medicine. It is now only in the case of certain nervous maladies, which can be treated by suggestion, that religion has any important part to play. I have not thought it necessary to expound at length the work of science in the struggle against disease, because the evidence on this point is extremely clear and precise. Every one must accept it, and even the passionate enemies of science have to bow before the fact. However, the problem has been changed. Science they now admit, is capable, no doubt, of assuaging humanity in its sufferings from this or the other disease. But there is another question. Disease is only an episode in human life, and the great problems remain unsolved by science. It is not enough to cure a man of diphtheria or intermittent fever; it is necessary to explain what the destiny of man is, and why he must grow old and die at a time when his desire to live is strongest. Here, plainly, all science must fail, and here must begin the beneficent work of religion and philosophy. But as science is constantly casting doubt on the dogmas of religion, and criticising adversely the systems of philosophy, it is plain, that so far from being of service, science is actually harmful to mankind. The campaign against science was opened long ago. In the eighteenth century Rousseau[274] opened it with brilliancy and zest worthy of his reputation. He defended his theme with vigour and eloquence and the following quotations may serve as an example, “Know O people,” he wrote, “that nature has desired to preserve you from science as a mother tries to snatch a dangerous weapon from the hands of her child; that the secrets which she has hidden from you are evils from which she would preserve you, and that one of her greatest gifts is the difficulty with which knowledge is acquired. Human beings are perverse, but they would have been worse had they had the misfortune to be born learned men.[275] Our sciences are futile in so far as they fail to attain their objects, but they are worse than futile in the results that they bring about. Born of idleness, they cherish their mother—Tell me, illustrious philosophers, you from whom we know why matter attracts matter, the relations of the orbits traced by revolving planets, the mathematical properties of curves, what stars may be inhabited, what insects exhibit curious modes of reproduction; tell me, I say, you from whom we have gained such marvellous information, if you had never learned of these things, should we have been less numerous, less well governed, less flourishing, or worse disposed?”[276]