and deformities upon the curing of which science so prides itself, effecting these cures in hospitals, the luxurious appointments of which cannot be accessible to all.
It is just as if men who had badly ploughed a field and badly sown it with bad seed should walk on this field and treat some broken ears of corn, meanwhile trampling on the rest; and should then exhibit this art of treating the broken ears as a proof of their knowledge of agriculture.
Our science, in order to become a science and to be really useful instead of harmful to humanity, must first of all renounce its experimental method, which causes it to consider as its business merely the study of what exists, and return to the only wise and fruitful understanding of science, according to which its subject is the investigation of how men must live. In this is the object and meaning of science, whereas, the investigation of what exists can be the subject of science only to the extent to which this investigation contributes to the knowledge of how men should live.
It is precisely this acknowledgment of the incompetency of experimental science and of the necessity of adopting another method that is expressed in Carpenter's essay.
1898.
