EDITOR'S TABLE. 



695 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 



OUR readers have had the opportu- 

 nity of following, in the interesting 

 articles contrihuted to this periodical by 

 Dr. Andrew D. White, the marvelous 

 history of the struggle which science 

 from its birth has had to wage with the 

 forces of intellectual obstruction. The 

 great foe to science, it is not too much 

 to say, has been theology. To say this 

 is not to cast doubt on the possibility of 

 a true theology ; it is merely to affirm 

 that, in point of fact, the particular the- 

 ologies that have heretofore occupied 

 the ground have one and all felt them- 

 selves threatened by science, and have 

 set themselves to resist its advance by 

 every means in their power. We see 

 no reason why this fact should not be 

 frankly recognized. In the natural 

 course of things theology deals in im- 

 aginative fashion with questions of ori- 

 gin and development ; and until exact 

 knowledge begins to prevail the notions 

 thus established serve a more or less 

 useful purpose. As knowledge grows, 

 these conceptions are found to be faulty ; 

 but theology resists any change in the 

 first place, from a general conservative 

 instinct, and, in the second, because the 

 cause of moral and social order seems to 

 be more or less involved with the primi- 

 tive cosmogony. But when once man 

 has begun to observe, to compare, to 

 verify, and to record, he has laid a foun- 

 dation that can not be shaken, he has 

 sown a ferment that must grow and 

 spread till it has leavened the whole of 

 human thought. Systems founded upon 

 imagination must yield to those pro- 

 duced by the use of the reasoning fac- 

 ulty. They were no better than guesses 

 at the first ; and if they furnish an ad- 

 umbration, however vague, of the truth, 

 it is almost more than we have any right 



to expect. Reason itself errs in many 

 of its constructions, but it faces the light, 

 and year by year and age by age it is 

 able to perfect its work. 



We fail, therefore, to see why any of 

 our religious contemporaries should take 

 in evil part the really instructive treat- 

 ment which Dr. White has given to this 

 subject of the perfecting of science 

 through opposition and conflict. They 

 really need not feel too bad about it. 

 In a certain way it was good for sci- 

 ence, just as it was for the Psalmist, to 

 be afflicted. The natural reluctance 

 which men of science felt to find them- 

 selves at variance with established be- 

 liefs, armed with the power of persecu- 

 tion, led them to scan their theories very 

 carefully before giving them to the world. 

 Moreover, the very difficulties of the situ- 

 ation drew out much heroism of charac- 

 ter, and made science more conscious 

 than it would otherwise have been of 

 its moral and intellectual mission. 

 Whether in these comparatively peace- 

 ful times the work of science is done in 

 as high and noble a spirit as formerly is 

 perhaps open to question. 



The lesson which nearly all sensible 

 men draw from the history of science is 

 simply this, that the enlightened reason 

 of man is the only interpreter of Na- 

 ture's laws, and that physical theories 

 handed down from remote antiquity 

 have simply no claim whatever upon 

 our acceptance in the present day. It 

 matters not whether a misapplied inge- 

 nuity can find in them some distant re- 

 semblance to known facts, any more 

 than it matters, when a weather prophet 

 guesses at the weather, how near the 

 mark or how wide of it his guess may fall. 

 In the present day we have done with 

 guessing in matters scientific. We may 

 frame hypotheses, but, if so, their des- 



