Leo Tolstoy

On the Significance of Science and Art Leo Tolstoy

Extract: CHAPTER I. . . . [169] The justification of all persons who have freed themselves from toil is now founded on experimental, positive science. The scientific theory is as follows: - "For the study of the laws of life of human societies, there exists but one indubitable method, -the positive, experimental, critical method "Only sociology, founded on biology, founded on all the positive sciences, can give us the laws of humanity. Humanity, or human communities, are the organisms already prepared, or still in process of formation, and which are subservient to all the laws of the evolution of organisms. "One of the chief of these laws is the variation of destination among the portions of the organs. Some people command, others obey. If some have in superabundance, and others in want, this arises not from the will of God, not because the empire is a form of manifestation of personality, but because in societies, as in organisms, division of labor becomes indispensable for life as a whole. Some people perform the muscular labor in societies; others, the mental labor." Upon this doctrine is founded the prevailing justification of our time. Not long ago, their reigned in the learned, cultivated world, a moral philosophy, according to which it appeared that every thing which exists is reasonable; that there is no such thing as evil or good; and that it is unnecessary for man to war against evil, but that it is only necessary for him to display intelligence, -one man in the military service, another in the judicial, another on the violin. There have been many and varied expressions of human wisdom, and these phenomena were known to the men of the nineteenth century........