12; 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



BACK TO DOGMA! 



THE Marquis of Salisbury did not 

 adopt the above words as the 

 motto of his recent presidential address 

 to the British Association, but he might 

 have done so, for they fairly sum up the 

 drift and spirit of that able but decid- 

 edly reactionary performance, the full 

 text of which will be found in our pres- 

 ent number. His lordship, it will be 

 seen, thought it well to remind his hear- 

 ers of " the condition in which we stand 

 toward three or four of the most impor- 

 tant physical questions which it has been 

 the effort of the last century to solve," 

 or, as he also described them, "stupen- 

 dous problems of natural study which 

 still defy our investigation." It is well 

 to have our attention drawn as often as 

 may be necessary to unsettled problems, 

 provided it be done for the purpose of 

 facilitating and encouraging further ef- 

 fort toward their solution. Whether 

 that was the object which his lordship 

 had in view, or at heart, is rendered a 

 little doubtful by the tenor and particu- 

 larly by the conclusion of his discourse. 

 lie showed that chemical science has 

 not yet succeeded in explaining the 

 nature and origin of the so-called ele- 

 mentary bodies, of which not less than 

 sixty-five are recognized. He next ob- 

 served how completely we had also 

 failed to obtain any knowledge of the 

 ether beyond the necessary assumption 

 that it is an undulating medium. Turn- 

 ing to biology, he dwelt upon the fact 

 that, although chemists have succeeded 

 in manufacturing certain substances 

 which had previously only been pro- 

 duced in living bodies, no living organ- 

 ism had ever been produced by human 

 art, nor had the principle of life ever 

 discovered itself to human investigation. 

 Lastly, after a courteous acknowledg- 

 ment of the services rendered by Dar- 



win to biological science, he reached the 

 point to which all his previous remarks 

 had been tending, proclaimed his per- 

 sonal conviction that the doctrine of 

 natural selection was inadequate to ex- 

 plain the origin of species, and that 

 there was nothing left for us but to fall 

 back on the hypothesis of intelligent 

 and beneficent design as the ruling and 

 guiding principle in the universe. 



The end of his lordship's address 

 thus throws light on the beginning. In 

 reality it was an allocution not to the 

 British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, but to the British pub- 

 lic. The British Association did not re- 

 quire to be reminded that che ultimate 

 atom of matter had not yet been discov- 

 ered, nor that the ether still remained 

 not much more than a working hy- 

 pothesis, nor that chemical synthesis had 

 not yet compassed the production of a 

 definite living organism. The British 

 public, on the other hand, would find a 

 general declaration of failure on these 

 several lines of research more or less 

 comforting; seeing that, like most other 

 publics in so-called civilized countries, 

 while it is quite prepared to acclaim the 

 results of science wlien they take the 

 form of cheapened goods or increased 

 conveniences of life, it dearly loves to 

 think that philosophers make blunders 

 and meet with disappointments, and, on 

 the whole, are not so much wiser than 

 other people. Consequently, the com- 

 munication that was of little value or 

 significance to the learned body to which 

 it was addressed, was of much (mislead- 

 ing) significance to the unlearned body 

 of the public for whom, we can not but 

 believe, it was mainly intended. 



In dealing with the doctrine of natu- 

 ral selection his lordship does not seem 

 to us to have been altogether fair. He 

 made as much as possible of the diflicul- 



