mushrooms may be eaten, how to propagate them, and how
to prepare them in the most suitable manner. And yet all this is the
province of science.

I am aware, that, according to its own definition, science ought to be
useless, i.e., science for the sake of science; but surely this is an
obvious evasion. The province of science is to serve the people. We
have invented telegraphs, telephones, phonographs; but what advances have
we effected in the life, in the labor, of the people? We have reckoned
up two millions of beetles! And we have not tamed a single animal since
biblical times, when all our animals were already domesticated; but the
reindeer, the stag, the partridge, the heath-cock, all remain wild.

Our botanists have discovered the cell, and in the cell protoplasm, and
in that protoplasm still something more, and in that atom yet another
thing. It is evident that these occupations will not end for a long time
to come, because it is obvious that there can be no end to them, and
therefore the scientist has no time to devote to those things which are
necessary to the people. And therefore, again, from the time of Egyptian
and Hebrew antiquity, when wheat and lentils had already been cultivated,
down to our own times, not a single plant has been added to the food of
the people, with the exception of the potato, and that was not obtained
by science.

Torpedoes have been invented, and apparatus for taxation, and so forth.
But the spinning-whined, the woman's weaving-loom, the plough, the
hatchet, the chain, the rake, the bucket, the well-sweep, are exactly the
same as they were in the days of Rurik; and if there has been any change,
then that change has not been effected by scientific people.

And it is the same with the arts. We have elevated a lot of people to
the rank of great writers; we have picked these writers to pieces, and
have written mountains of criticism, and criticism on the critics, and
criticism on the critics of the critics. And we have collected picture-
galleries, and have studied different schools of art in detail; and we
have so many symphonies and orchestras and operas, that it is becoming
difficult even for us to listen to them. But what have we added to the
popular _bylini_ [the epic songs], legends, tales, songs? What music,
what pictures, have we given to the people?

On the Nikolskaya books are manufactured for the people, and harmonicas
in Tula; and in neither have we taken any