Science & Tech Quote by Richard Le Gallienne

Modern science gets cast as the cold shower to romance’s fever dream; Le Gallienne flips the cliche and makes science the capable accomplice. The sentence is an argument disguised as a love letter, packed with personification: science isn’t a method or an institution here, it’s a “sympathetic” friend, a “swift” helper, an “indulgent minister.” That vocabulary matters. It takes the language of intimacy and service and drapes it over the era’s most intimidating authority, suggesting that the laboratory and the boudoir aren’t rivals but collaborators.

The context is late-Victorian and early-modernist culture, when electricity, telegraphy, photography, and new medical knowledge were reshaping daily life and, just as importantly, the imagination. “Romance” isn’t only courtship; it’s adventure, enchantment, the ability to project desire into the world. Le Gallienne’s intent is to defend wonder against the standard “science kills mystery” lament. His subtext is tactical: if science can be framed as romance’s “resourceful friend,” then modernity doesn’t have to feel like spiritual dispossession. It can feel like expanded possibility.

Notice the careful hierarchy. Science serves romance “in its serious need” (speed, access, survival, communication) and also “its lighter fancies” (novelty, spectacle, aesthetic thrills). He’s not naive about science’s power; “irresistible” hints at force. The charm of the line is how it converts that force into courtship, making progress sound less like conquest and more like an invitation to dream faster, farther, with better tools.