the welfare of society and of
the individual, ought to feel a deep reverence and love for these two
powers, and to be ready to give up their lives to them. For if--which in
the present condition of the world is an impossible hypothesis--they
were to fail, the human race would be irretrievably lost, since these
are our real liberators from barbarism, which have upheld mankind in the
struggle against it, under whatever name these principles have
appeared.

I am aware that my theory will meet with many obstinate and zealous
opponents in Italy, since I use the simple terms of reason and science,
unqualified by other arguments, and I maintain the absolute independence
of free thought. Opposition is the more likely since science and freedom
have been held responsible for sectarian intemperance, for the
disturbances of the lower orders, for the inevitable disasters, the
social and intellectual aberrations both of the learned and of the
common peoples: science and freedom are held to have repeated the wiles
of the serpent in Eden. But I am not uneasy at the thought of such
opposition, since the progress of the human race has been owing to the
fact that men convinced of the truth took no heed of the superstitious
and interested war waged against them, sometimes from ignorance of
things in general and of the law which governs civilization, sometimes
from honest conviction.

The falsity of the accusation so generally made against science and
freedom will appear if we consider that all the benefits we now enjoy,
civil, scientific, and material, and which are especially enjoyed by the
men who inveigh most strongly against these two factors, are solely
derived from science and freedom. Without them we should be in the
civil, intellectual, and material condition of the kingdom of Dahomey,
and in the savage and barbarous state of all primitive peoples. If the
misunderstanding of truth or an imperfect science is injurious, it must
not therefore be rejected. Science is the constant and vigilant
generator of all social improvement, and the most formidable enemy of
the tyranny of a despot, of an oligarchy, or of the multitude, whether
it take a religious or secular form. Since sharp instruments are
powerful aids to civilization and material prosperity, they are not to
be altogether set aside because some persons die miserably by them. As I
have always maintained, and now repeat with still stronger conviction,
science and freedom, the ev