Such words were capable of impressing men because of their eloquence and sincerity, but they could not arrest the continued and triumphant advance of science, which indeed, precisely at the end of the eighteenth century, began its modern and lasting progress. For it was then that Laplace described the system of the heavens and that Lavoisier laid the foundation of modern chemistry and of our knowledge of the indestructibility of matter. In the nineteenth century, science has made a revolution in life by its application of steam and by its other triumphs. None the less it has not satisfied many distinguished persons. And to-day we find a writer of genius, in the manner of Rousseau, raising his voice against the science of the nineteenth century. Tolstoi, in an essay of which the title is, “On the Aim of Science and Art,” has attempted to show the incompetence of science with regard to the great problems that occupy humanity. The task set himself by the Russian writer was much harder than that of Rousseau, for with the passing of a century science has become much more powerful. Tolstoi is convinced that theoretical investigations into the origin of life, the intimate structure of living matter and so forth, are of no importance to human beings, and serve no other purpose than to flatter the pretensions of the learned. “All that we call culture,” he affirmed, “our sciences, our arts, improvements in the amenity of life, are no other than attempts to deceive the moral cravings of mankind; all that we call hygiene and medicine are no other than attempts to deceive the physical and natural cravings of mankind.”[277] The whole progress of science “up to the present time, has not only not improved the lot of the majority of mankind, that is to say of the labourers, but has made it worse.”[278] Tolstoi thinks that the epithet “true science” could be given only to “knowledge of the right aim and true happiness of each individual and of mankind as a whole. Such a science would serve as a guiding thread in determining the proper sphere of all knowledge”; “without knowledge of the proper aim of life and of the real good of humanity, all other knowledge and every art become merely amusements idle or even harmful.”[279] The chief grievance of the great Russian writer against knowledge, culture, and progress can be resolved into the powerlessness of these to explain the most difficult problems of humanity, that is to say the real aim of human life, and what really constitutes true happiness. In this connection, Tolstoi gives expression to a view which is shared by many thinkers. Some years later, Brunetière,[280] a well-known French writer and public man, under the influence of a recent journey to Rome and visit to the Pope, made public a similar opinion, and proclaimed aloud the fallibility of science.