EDITOR'S TABLE. 



1M 



limit of their inquiries. He staked out 

 the ground within which all is legiti- 

 mate, and beyond which all is mere 

 fantastic pseudo-science and subversive 

 of religious faith. It has ever been a 

 favorite occupation with outsiders to 

 instruct the investigators of Nature 

 where they must stop, so that scientific 

 progress has largely consisted in level- 

 ling barriers and establishing the rights 

 of inquiry in forbidden places. More- 

 over, at each step of advance the pio- 

 neers of research have been bidden to 

 stand, in the name of religion ; so that 

 in breaking down these restrictions ad- 

 vancing science has been simply widen- 

 ing the scope and liberty of religion 

 itself. 



Mr. Godwin may now speak with 

 safety of the " roaring furnaces of the 

 sun," but, for suggesting that the sun 

 is a mass of incandescent matter An- 

 axagoras was accused of impiety and 

 banished. Hipparchus, for making a 

 catalogue of the stars, was denounced 

 as impious. Galileo, for inquiring into 

 the celestial motions, was anathema- 

 tized as a heretic. Newton's theory 

 of gravitation was branded as an athe- 

 istic attempt to explain the universe 

 without the intervention of God. The 

 early anatomists were charged with 

 impiety for dissecting the human body. 

 The first geologists incurred theological 

 denunciation, and the abhorrence of 

 the pious, as seeking to undermine the 

 Bible and overthrow Christianity. But 

 in each of these cases it turned out that 

 the alarm of the religious was ground- 

 less, and every one of the departments 

 of knowledge that science has created, 

 the theologians, as soon as they got 

 through denouncing it, have turned to 

 account for their own purposes. But 

 it seems that there is a class that can- 

 not even learn in the school of experi- 

 ence. The next great step of progressive 

 thought, the synthesis of the sciences, 

 the unification of their facts and princi- 

 ples by the most comprehensive laws, 

 so as to arrive at the philosophy of Na- 



ture on the basis of actual knowledge, 

 is sternly contested, and we are to have 

 the fight over again with the descend- 

 ants of the old enemies of investiga- 

 tion, and on exactly the same grounds. 

 Again, men of science are bidden to 

 stand lest God be driven from the uni- 

 verse. Mr. Godwin appears as the 

 champion of imperilled faith, and his 

 speech is reechoed and applauded by 

 the press as a well-timed defence of re- 

 ligion against the inroads of " irreligious 

 science." Let us briefly examine his 

 argument. 



After mentioning some examples of 

 spurious science, Mr. Godwin says: 

 "These are conjectures that impose 

 upon us their own fantastic offspring 

 for the legitimate heirs of science. 

 Science is exact and certain and au- 

 thoritative, because dealing with fact 

 and the systematic coordination of facts 

 only. She does not wander away into 

 the void inane. She has nothing to do 

 with questions of primal origin nor of 

 ultimate destinies ; not because they 

 are unimportant questions, or insoluble, 

 but because they transcend her instru- 

 ments and her methods. She leaves 

 them to philosophy, which proceeds not 

 by demonstration and proof but by in- 

 sight, by intuition and by moral reason- 

 ing ; or she leaves them to revelation, in 

 whose supernal light alone they can be 

 properly illuminated and fully seen." 



To avoid being misled, a correction 

 or two is here necessary, before con- 

 sidering Mr. Godwin's main position. 

 He says that science is exact, which is 

 quite true of the " exact sciences," but 

 is not true of all science. It is not true 

 of those in which the phenomena do 

 not admit of precise measurement, such 

 as biology, psychology, and sociology, 

 which are nevertheless clear and cer- 

 tain in their truths and as strictly sci- 

 ences as any other. He says that sci- 

 ence deals with "facts and the coordi- 

 nation of facts only." But facts can 

 neither be determined nor coordinated 

 except by the constant use of theories 



