THE CALL TO SERVICE
tion which science imparts is as cheerful as that. Another tells us how to prolong life, by drinking sour milk. But if the first doctor is right and our heyday is over at forty, why should we wish to grow old? Our true benefactor would tell us how long we ought to wish to live. Or even when science is not so blind, it often sins by applying itself to an end it knows to be wrong. It invents vehicles of constantly greater speed, though it assures us that such acceleration is the ruin of our nerves. It invents methods of killing people, and means of protecting them, though it persuades us at the same time—as if we needed persuasion!—that war is an awkward way of serving mankind.
Those of you who heard with complacence my criticism of religion ought not to protest if I bring the same judgment to bear on science. Indeed there is a fine irony in substituting the service of
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