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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



and hypotheses. Science consists in 

 the interpretation of facts, and this al- 

 ways begins with hypothetical conjec- 

 ture ; while the progress of science is 

 nothing else than the growth of hy- 

 pothesis and of theory by which facts 

 are put in their proper relations. 



Mr. Godwin avers that science has 

 nothing to do with questions of " pri- 

 mal origin," by which he means, as we 

 gather from a passage to be directly 

 quoted, questions of the origin of the 

 universe* the origin of our earth, the 

 origin of plants and animals, the ori- 

 gin of man and his institutions. This is 

 certainly an extraordinary statement to 

 put forth to the scientific men of the 

 present day. And that a great problem 

 of Nature which is soluble, is yet not a 

 problem of science, but belongs to a 

 method which " proceeds not by dem- 

 onstration and proof," is a statement 

 that will be equally surprising. As for 

 the method of "insight," "intuition," 

 "moral reasoning," and "revelation," 

 it had been tried on the phenomena 

 of Nature for thousands of years, and 

 it was exactly because it had bro- 

 ken down that the method of sci- 

 ence arose. The order of the uni- 

 verse has been discovered by demand- 

 ing "demonstration and proof;" but 

 on what ground is it assumed that 

 the problem of the present operations 

 of the universe is of a different nature 

 from the problem of its past opera- 

 tions ? The order of Nature is one and 

 continuous, and the same method which 

 has given us a knowledge of its pres- 

 ent workings can alone be competent 

 to give us the knowledge of its past 

 workings. Science is the coordination 

 of facts, that is, putting them in order, 

 but they must be coordinated in their 

 sequences as well as in their coexist- 

 ences in time as well as in space. Nor 

 is it any more possible to study the 

 present in Nature, without going back to 

 the past which has created it, than it is 

 to do the same thing in political affairs. 

 It is now well recognized that our I 



knowledge of existing things is pro- 

 foundly dependent upon our knowledge 

 of the way they have been produced. 

 The present phase of astronomical sci- 

 ence embraces the problem of the for- 

 mation of the solar and stellar systems. 

 What is geology but a history of the 

 formation of the earth ? Zoology has 

 been revolutionized by modern embryo- 

 logical studies. The psychological point 

 of view is now that of the develop- 

 ment of mind. Thilology has become 

 a science through the study of lingual 

 origins ; and sociological science has at 

 its foundation the problem of the origin 

 and growth of social activities and or- 

 ganizations. Questions of origin, of 

 derivation, and of transformations in 

 time, are, in fact, the supreme charac- 

 teristics of the science of the nineteenth 

 century. 



Mr. Godwin forbids it. Tie might as 

 well forbid the flow of the Gulf Stream ; 

 it cannot be arrested till the study of 

 cause and effect is ruled out of the 

 scientific court as an illegitimate pro- 

 cedure. The study of origins is the 

 highest issue of ages of scientific prepa- 

 ration, and the ripening of science into 

 an authentic philosophy. 



Of Mr. Godwin's three or four ex- 

 amples of illegitimate science, here is 

 one. He says: " Then there is another 

 of these outside teachers of science, but 

 this one is entitled to the highest respect 

 though I think he rides a hobby be- 

 yond the capacity of the creature to car- 

 ry who contrives a vast process of cos- 

 mic evolutions, who tells us that a great 

 while ago ten thousand years no, a 

 hundred million of millions of millions 

 of years ago a nebulous gas was dif- 

 fused through the immensity of space, 

 which first twisted itself into a solar sys- 

 tem, then into a world, then into layers 

 of mineral strata, then into vegetable 

 spirales, into animal motions, into hu- 

 man vortices called societies, into iliads, 

 parthenons, and Shakespeares, and at 

 last into a grand philosophy of evolution 

 the crown and consummation of the 



