UNSOLVED PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE. 35 



student's microscope was turned inward upon the recesses of his 

 own brain ; and when the supply of facts and realities failed, as 

 it very speedily did, the scientific imagination was not wanting to 

 furnish to successive generations an interminable series of con- 

 flicting speculations. That science science in our academical 

 sense had its day of rapid growth, of boundless aspiration, of 

 enthusiastic votaries. It fascinated the rising intellect of the 

 time, and it is said people were not particular about figures in 

 those days that its attractions were at one time potent enough 

 to gather round the university thirty thousand students, who for 

 the sake of learning its teaching were willing to endure a life of 

 the severest hardship. Such a state of feeling is now an archaeo- 

 logical curiosity. The revolt against Aristotle is now some three 

 centuries old. But the mental sciences which were supposed to 

 rest upon his writings have retained some of their ascendency 

 even till this day, and have only slowly and jealously admitted 

 the rivalry of the growing sciences of observation. The subject 

 is interesting to us, as this undecided state of feeling colored the 

 experiences of this association at its last Oxford visit, nearly a 

 generation later, in 1860. The warmth of the encounters which 

 then took place have left a vivid impression on the minds of those 

 who are old enough to have witnessed them. That much energy 

 was on that occasion converted into heat may, I think, be inferred 

 from the mutual distance which the two bodies have since main- 

 tained. Whereas the visit of 1832 was succeeded by another visit 

 in fifteen years, and the visit of 1847 was succeeded by another 

 visit in thirteen years, the year 1860 was followed by a long and 

 dreary interval of separation, which has only now, after four- 

 and-thirty years, been terminated. It has required the lapse of a 

 generation to draw the curtain of oblivion over those animated 

 scenes. It was popularly supposed that deep divergences upon 

 questions of religion were the motive force of those high contro- 

 versies. To some extent that impression was correct. But men 

 do not always discern the motives which are really urging them, 

 and I suspect that in many cases religious apprehensions only 

 masked the resentment of the older learning at the appearance 

 and claims of its younger rival. In any case, there is something 

 worthy of note, and something that conveys encouragement, in the 

 difference of the feeling which prevails now and the feeling that 

 was indicated then. Few men are now influenced by the strange 

 idea that questions of religious belief depend on the issues of 

 physical research. Few men, whatever their creed, would now 

 seek their geology in the books of their religion, or, on the other 

 hand, would fancy that the laboratory or the microscope could 

 help them to penetrate the mysteries which hang over the nature 

 and the destiny of the soul of man. And the old learning no 



