age of thirty years on the
necks of others, promising to do, when he shall have been taught,
something extremely useful, for which no one asks him; and when, from the
age of thirty until his death, he can live in the same manner, still
merely on the promise to do something, for which there has been no
request, this will not be division of labor (and, as a matter of fact,
there is no such thing in our society), but it will be what it already
is,--merely the appropriation, by force, of the toil of others; that same
appropriation by force of the toil of others which the philosophers
formerly designated by various names,--for instance, as indispensable
forms of life,--but which scientific science now calls the organic
division of labor.

The whole significance of scientific science lies in this alone. It has
now become a distributer of diplomas for idleness; for it alone, in its
sanctuaries, selects and determines what is parasitical, and what is
organic activity, in the social organism. Just as though every man could
not find this out for himself much more accurately and more speedily, by
taking counsel of his reason and his conscience. It seems to men of
scientific science, that there can be no doubt of this, and that their
activity is also indubitably organic; they, the scientific and artistic
workers, are the brain cells, and the most precious cells in the whole
organism.

Ever since men--reasoning beings--have existed, they have distinguished
good from evil, and have profited by the fact that men have made this
distinction before them; they have warred against evil, and have sought
the good, and have slowly but uninterruptedly advanced in that path. And
divers delusions have always stood before men, hemming in this path, and
having for their object to demonstrate to them, that it was not necessary
to do this, and that it was not necessary to live as they were living.
With fearful conflict and difficulty, men have freed themselves from many
delusions. And behold, a new and a still more evil delusion has sprung
up in the path of mankind,--the scientific delusion.

This new delusion is precisely the same in nature as the old ones; its
gist lies in secretly leading astray the activity of our reason and
conscience, and of those who have lived before us, by something external.
In scientific science, this external thing is--investigation.

The cunning of this science consists in this,--that, after pointing out
to men