CORRESP ONDENCE. 



109 



space and time, not yet laid down on the 

 map ? May not some men have insights 

 into the working of laws yet unexplored, 

 such as Mozart had into the laws of music, 

 and Shakespeare into the laws of the hu- 

 man heart ? Assuredly you cannot say nay, 

 in the name of science, which, as we agree, 

 being confined to the phenomenal and rela- 

 tive, has no right to pronounce either one 

 way or the other, as to what, by supposi- 

 tion, lies beyond the phenomenal and rela- 

 tive. That supposed beyond may be wholly 

 chimerical ; but it is not from science that 

 we shall learn the fact, if it be a fact. In 

 other words, I contend and here I hit upon 

 the prime fallacy of many soi-disant scien- 

 tists that science has no right to erect what 

 it does contain into a negation of everything 

 which it does not contain. Still less has it a 

 right to decide questions out of its confessed 

 province, because it cannot reach them by 

 its peculiar methods, or subject them to its 

 peculiar tests ? 



Fortunately for me, though you take me 

 especially to task for it, I am sustained in 

 this position by some of the most eminent 

 men of science of the day, and I may say, 

 by great numbers of them, as I have reason 

 to know. You yourself published, only a 

 little while since, Dr. Carpenter's address, 

 as President, to the British Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, in which, after 

 expounding very clearly man's rightful func- 

 tion as " the interpreter of Nature," he said : 

 " The science of modern times, however, has 

 taken a more special direction. Fixing its 

 attention exclusively on the order of Nature, 

 it has separated itself wholly from theology, 

 whose function it is to seek after its cause. 

 .... But, when science, passing beyond its 

 own limits, assumes to take the place of the- 

 ology and sets up its own conception of the 

 order of Nature as a sufficient account of 

 its cause, it is invading a province of 

 thought to which it has no claim, and not 

 unreasonably provokes the hostility of those 

 who ought to be its best friends." 



In the same number you published Dr. 

 Gray's address, as President of the Ameri- 

 can Association, wherein, after quoting Miss 

 Cobbe's remark, that " it is a singular fact, 

 that when we find out how any thing is done, 

 our first conclusion is, that God did not do 

 it," he adds, that such a conclusion is "pre- 



mature, unworthy, and deplorable," aud 

 concludes with the hope " that, in the fu- 

 ture, even more than in the past, faith in an 

 order which is the basis of science will not 

 (as it cannot be reasonably) be dissevered 

 from faith in an ordainer which is the ba- 

 sis of religion." And, my old friend, and 

 honored teacher, Dr. Dlenry, from whose en- 

 thusiasm for natural studies I imbibed what- 

 ever taste for them I have retained, in a 

 letter addressed to this Tyndall banquet, 

 and published in your last number, wrote : 

 " While we have endeavored to show that 

 abstract science is entitled to high appreci- 

 ation and liberal support, we do not claim 

 for it the power of solving questions belong- 

 ing to other realms of thought. . . . Much 

 harm has been done by the antagonism 

 which has sometimes arisen between the ex- 

 pounders of science on the one hand, and 

 those of theology on the other, and we 

 would deprecate the tendency which exhib- 

 its itself in certain minds to foster feelings 

 antagonistic to the researches into the phe- 

 nomena of Nature, for fear they should dis- 

 prove the interpretations of Holy Writ made 

 long before the revelations of physical sci- 

 ence, which might serve for a better ex- 

 egesis of what has been revealed ; and also 

 the tendency in other minds to transcend 

 the known, and to pronounce dogmatically 

 as to the possibility of modes of existence 

 on which physical research has not thrown, 

 and we think never can throw, positive light." 

 Now, here is precisely, though not all, my 

 meaning, and yet you rap me over the 

 knuckles for it, while you publish the praises 

 of Carpenter, Gray, and Henry. 



All these illustrious men admit the lim- 

 its of Science, and also the possibility of 

 passing beyond them. As men of good 

 common-sense, and no less as philosophers 

 and scientists, they are perfectly aware that, 

 while the scope of Science lies within the 

 contents of experience, and of the induc- 

 tions drawn from that experience, it is haz- 

 arding the character of it to go further. 

 They feel too, no doubt, what I certainly 

 do, that there are certain broad, deep, in- 

 eradicable instincts of the human mind, 

 which, however they originated, whether 

 implanted there by creative act, or formed 

 by the slow growth of thousands of years, 

 are now become the inexpugnable basis of 



