CAUSES WHICH CREATE SCIENTIFIC MEN. 69 



came penetrated with liberal ideas ; ' and, since IV 30, the date of the 

 first election of a Genevese to an important foreign scientific society 

 our own Royal Society Geneva has never ceased to produce 'mathe- 

 maticians, physicists, and naturalists, in a number wholly out of pro- 

 portion to her small population. 



The author arsrues from these and similar cases that it is not so 

 much the character of the dogma taught that is blighting to science 

 as the dogmatic habit in education. It is the evil custom of continu- 

 ally telling young people that it is improper to occupy their minds 

 about such and such things, and to be curious, that makes them timid 

 and indifferent. Curiosity about realities, not about fictions of the im- 

 agination, is the motive power of scientific discovery, and it must be 

 backed up by a frank and fearless spirit. M. de Candolle, in spite of 

 his anti-heredity declarations, enunciates an advanced pro-heredity 

 opinion well worthy of note. He says it is known that birds original- 

 ly tame, when found on a desolate island, soon acquire a fear of man, 

 and transmit that fear as an instinctive habit to their descendants. 

 Hence, we might expect a population, reared for many generations 

 under a dogmatic creed, to become congenitally indisposed to look 

 truth in the face, and to be timid in intellectual inquiry. 



Can, then, religion and science march in harmony ? It is true that 

 their methods are very different ; the religious man is attached by his 

 heart to his religion, and cannot endure to hear its truth discussed, 

 and he fears scientific discoveries which might, in some slight way, 

 discredit what he holds more important than all the rest. The scien- 

 tific man seeks truth regardless of consequences ; he balances proba- 

 bilities, and inclines temporarily to that opinion which has most prob- 

 abilities in its favor, ready to abandon it the moment the balance 

 shifts, and the evidence in favor of a new hypothesis may prevail. 

 These, indeed, are radical differences, but the two characters have one 

 powerful element in common. Neither the religious nor the scientific 

 man will consent to sacrifice his opinions to material gain, to political 

 ends, nor to pleasure. Both agree in the love of intellectual pursuits, 

 and in the practice of a simple, regular, and laborious life, and both 

 work in a disinterested way for the public good. A strong evidence 

 of this fundamental agreement is found in the number of sons of 

 clergymen who have distinguished themselves as scientific investiga- 

 tors ; it is so large that we must deplore the void in the ranks of sci- 

 ence caused by the celibacy of the Catholic clergy. If Protestant min- 

 isters, like them, had never married, Berzelius, Euler, Linnaeus, and 

 "Wollaston, would never have been born. But to revert to what we 

 were speaking about. There are some six different objects in the pur- 



1 In 1*735, public opinion had become so tolerant that it was enacted that candidates 

 for the ministry should no longer be required to make a declaration of faith, but simply 

 to promise to teach and preach conformably to the Bible and to the light of their own 

 consciences (p. 2C4). 



