428 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of science at least as much as I did ; but nobody raised an outcry 

 against him. The freedom that he took I claim, but in a more purely 

 scientific direction. And looking at what I must regard as the extrav- 

 agances of the religious world ; at the very inadequate and foolish 

 notions concerning this universe entertained by the majority of our 

 religious teachers ; at the waste of energy on the part of good men 

 over things unworthy, if I might say it without discourtesy, of the at- 

 tention of enlightened heathens : the fight about the fripperies of 

 Ritualism, the mysteries of the Eucharist, and the Athanasian Creed ; 

 the forcing on the public view of Pontigny Pilgrimages ; the dating 

 of historic epochs from the definition of the Immaculate Conception ; 

 the proclamation of the Divine Glories of the Sacred Heart standing 

 in the midst of these insanities, it did not appear to me extravagant 

 to claim the public tolerance for an hour and a half for the statement 

 of what I hold to be more reasonable views : views more in accord- 

 ance with the verities which science has brought to light, and which 

 many weary souls would, I thought, welcome with gratification and 

 relief. 



But to come to closer quarters. The expression to which the most 

 violent exception has been taken is this : " Abandoning all disguise, 

 the confession I feel bound to make before you is that I prolong the 

 vision backward across the boundary of the experimental evidence, 

 and discern, in that Matter which we, in our ignorance, and notwith- 

 standing our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered 

 with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and quality 

 of life." To call it a " chorus of dissent," as my Catholic critic does, 

 is a mild way of describing the storm of opprobrium with which this 

 statement has been assailed. But, the first blast of passion being past, 

 I hope I may again ask my opponents to consent to reason. First of 

 all, I am blamed for crossing the boundary of the experimental evi- 

 dence. I reply that this is the habitual action of the scientific mind at 

 least of that portion of it which applies itself to physical investigation. 

 Our theories of light, heat, magnetism, and electricty, all imply the 

 crossing of this boundary. My paper on the "Scientific Use of the 

 Imagination " illustrates this point in the amplest manner; and in the 

 lectui'e above referred to I have sought, incidentally, to make clear 

 how in physics the experiential incessantly leads to the ultra-experi- 

 ential ; how out of experience there always grows something finer than 

 mere experience, and that in their different powers of ideal extension 

 consists for the most part the difference betAveen the great and the 

 mediocre investigator. The kingdom of science, then, cometh not by 

 observation and experiment alone, but is completed by fixing the roots 

 of observation and experiment in a region inaccessible to both, and in 

 dealing with which we are forced to fall back upon the picturing power 

 of the mind. 



Passing the boundary of experience, therefore, does not, in the 



