EDITOR'S TABLE. 



843 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



SCIENCE AND NESCIENCE. 



IT is a very long- time since the dis- 

 covery was first made that the 

 processes of human thought are only 

 valid within limits ; and it might be 

 supposed that all the consequences 

 which could properly be deduced from 

 that fact had long ago been drawn 

 and reduced to their true value. Yet 

 every now and again it seems to 

 strike some thinker with new force 

 that the human mind is not all- com- 

 prehending ; and it is a singular 

 thing that, when this happens, we are 

 neai'ly always asked to take back 

 some view or doctrine which we had 

 previously discarded, or at least laid 

 aside, as destitute of proof and not in 

 harmony with the general body of our 

 knowledge. In other words, because 

 we can not understand or measure 

 everything, we must consider that 

 there is a door perpetually open into 

 some fourth dimension, as it were, 

 through which may freely enter be- 

 liefs of the most fantastic kind, and 

 such as, judged by the laws of our 

 own familiar three dimensions, we 

 should utterly refuse to accept. No 

 other than this is the lesson which 

 Mr. Balfour attempts to teach in his 

 much-discussed work, The Founda- 

 tions of Belief. He proves, most un- 

 necessarily, that science can not 

 reach the absolute origin of things, 

 and that, when we get back to such 

 ultimate conceptions of matter and 

 force as we are capable of forming, 

 we do not discover those finished 

 products of human evolution, moral 

 authority and the sense of beauty. 

 His work is described on the title- 

 page as being "introductory to the 

 study of theology," and the author 

 makes it plain that what he would 

 have us do is, on the ground of the 



insufficiency of human reason, to ac- 

 cept a system of theology, preferably 

 the Christian, which, while carrying 

 us back to the origin of all things, 

 will provide a basis for those moral 

 beliefs and sentiments which are es- 

 sential at once to the dignity of the 

 individual and the cohesion of so- 

 ciety, but which science, as he holds, 

 can neither explain nor justify. 



Now, we have no objection what- 

 ever to Mr. Balfour's conclusion that 

 people should cherish some form of 

 religious belief, but we thiuk he is 

 ill advised in trying to prove that, 

 because science is weak, theology (his 

 theology) is probably strong. What- 

 ever weakness attaches to science at- 

 taches to it by virtue of the limita- 

 tions of the human mind, which, as 

 Matthew Arnold says, 



" A thousand glimpses wins, 

 But never sees the whole." 



Science, as we have often said in 

 effect, is simply the product of the 

 striving of the mind after 1 exact 

 knowledge; and by exact knowledge 

 we mean knowledge brought more 

 and more into conformity with the 

 totality of human perceptions. If 

 Mr. Balfour could convict science of 

 using illegitimate processes or of en- 

 deavoring to stereotype unverified 

 or imperfectly verified doctrines, he 

 might very properly bid us look else- 

 where for guidance ; but this he no- 

 where does. He is well aware that 

 civilization is rich to-day with the 

 garnered results of a score of sepa- 

 rate sciences, and that men are com- 

 ing and going and living their lives 

 in a well-grounded assurance that, 

 in the main, what science teaches as 

 true is true, and that work done on 

 scientific principles will stand. 



