his method, and produces something, or rather, in prouder phrase, "creates" something. He becomes a "servant of truth" and a ruler in the great domain of history. If he was what they call ripe as a boy, he is now over-ripe. You only need shake him and wisdom will rattle down into your lap; but the wisdom is rotten, and every apple has its worm. Believe me, if men work in the factory of science and have to make themselves useful before they are really ripe, science is ruined as much as the slaves who have been employed too soon. I am sorry to use the common jargon about slave-owners and taskmasters in respect of such conditions, that might be thought free from any economic taint: but the words "factory, labour-market, auction-sale, practical use," and all the auxiliaries of egoism, come involuntarily to the lips in describing the younger generation of savants. Successful mediocrity tends to become still more mediocre, science still more "useful." Our modern savants are only wise on one subject, in all the rest they are, to say the least, different from those of the old stamp. In spite of that they demand honour and profit for themselves, as if the state and public opinion were bound to take the new coinage for the same value as the old. The carters have made a trade-compact among themselves, and settled that genius is superfluous, for every carrier is being re-stamped as one. And probably a later age will see that their edifices are only carted together and not built. To those who have ever on their lips the modern cry of battle and sacrifice--"Division of labour! fall into line!" we may say roundly: "If you try to further the progress of science as quickly as possible, you will end by destroying it as quickly as possible; just as the hen is worn out which you force to lay too many eggs." The progress of science has been amazingly rapid in the last decade; but consider the savants, those exhausted hens. They are certainly not "harmonious" natures: they can merely cackle more than before, because they lay eggs oftener: but the eggs are always smaller, though their books are bigger. The natural result of it all is the favourite "popularising" of science (or rather its feminising and infantising), the villainous habit of cutting the cloth of science to fit the figure of the "general public." Goethe saw the abuse in this, and demanded that science should only influence the outer world by way of _a nobler ideal of action_. The older generation of savants had good reason for thinking this abuse an oppressive burden: the modern savants have an equally good reason for welcoming it, because, leaving their little corner of knowledge out of account, they are part of the "general public" themselves, and its needs are theirs. They only require to take themselves less seriously to be able to open their little kingdom successfully to popular curiosity. This easy-going behaviour is called "the modest condescension of the