EDITOR'S TABLE. 



117 



validity of biological and psychological 

 sciences on the intrinsic ground that 

 they lack exactitude. It would have 

 been a point gained for his argument 

 to enforce the test of exactness, as then 

 these sciences would pass under a cloud 

 of discredit. But the test cannot be 

 accepted. His method of criticism 

 would throttle every science in its 

 growing stages before completeness of 

 demonstration had been attained. He 

 insists upon a criterion which would 

 abolish half the sciences and strip the 

 remainder of all validity and authority 

 except in their perfected forms. Re- 

 ferring to his address, he remarks : 



" But then, I said and it was the whole 

 purport of my speech made in the interests 

 of science as well as religion that we can 

 only expect these results from true science, 

 which investigates what Nature really is, and 

 not from a hasty and presumptuous science, 

 which pretends to give us what Nature may 

 be supposed to he. And my criterion of true 

 science, suggested in a phrase, was, that the 

 methods and results of it bear the impress 

 of exactitude or certainty." 



Now, nothing is more certain than 

 that we can never arrive at what Na- 

 ture really is except through the path- 

 way of " what Nature may be supposed 

 to 5e." All science begins with guesses 

 and conjectures, and its most valid laws 

 were at first but suppositions. The 

 evidence by which scientific truth is 

 determined necessarily involves suppo- 

 sitions to which it has been applied, 

 and these have to be gradually con- 

 firmed; hence, if exactitude is demand- 

 ed at the outset, all science becomes 

 impossible. 



To get at the full bearing of this 

 matter we quote the original passage 

 as it stands in the revised address of 

 the proceedings at the Tyndall Banquet. 

 It reads : 



" Science is exact and certain, and author- 

 itative, because dealing with facts, and the 

 systematic coordination of facts only. She 

 does not wander away into the void inane. 

 She has nothing to do with questions of pri- 

 mal origin, nor of ultimate destinies ; -not 



because they are unimportant questions or 

 insoluble, but because they transcend her 

 instruments and her methods. You cannot 

 measure love by the bushel, as the children 

 say; you cannot catch fancy in a forceps 

 to analyze its elements; you cannot fuse 

 thought in a crucible to detect what may be 

 dross, and what sound metal." 



We think that Mr. Godwin here 

 lends countenance to a prevailing fal- 

 lacy. Science is perpetually bidden to 

 keep within her sphere, and the popu- 

 lar notion of her sphere is that of ex- 

 perimentation. To most people the 

 word science connotes physical or ex- 

 perimental science. On this tacit as- 

 sumption Mr. Godwin declares that 

 cubic measure, forceps, and crucibles, 

 are not applicable to love, fancy, and 

 thought. Most true; but will he main- 

 tain that these are therefore not ame- 

 nable to scientific scrutiny? As we 

 understand it, science is a knowledge of 

 the constitution of things ; of the uni- 

 formities of the phenomena of Nature. 

 Whatever, in the universe around us, 

 or in the world within us, is open to 

 cognition, which can be examined and 

 known, and reexamined and verified, 

 is the proper subject-matter of science, 

 and the term is applied to all the knowl- 

 edge that has been arrived at in this 

 way. An emotion may be analyzed 

 and understood as well as a mineral. 

 Love, fancy, and thought, cannot be 

 subjected to laboratory processes, but 

 they may be known in their laws and 

 relations as mental phenomena, and in 

 this aspect they belong as strictly to 

 science as metals or gases. That they 

 cannot be weighed makes no difference, 

 because exactness is not the criterion 

 of science. Mr. Godwin asks, Where, 

 then, does the inexactness come in ? To 

 which we reply, wherever the instru- 

 ments, by which exactness is reached, 

 are inapplicable, or can only be imper- 

 fectly applied. The best criterion of 

 science is derived from the fact of or- 

 der and uniformity in Nature by which 

 one thing implies another, and we in- 



