436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



This sets aside very much that has been called science, and, as it 

 seems, perhaps nearly all that which has been the material used by 

 those who have raised the most smoke over tliis " conflict " question. 



"Guesses at truth" are valuable only as the pecking at a plas- 

 tered wall, to iind where a wooden beam runs, is useful ; but a guess 

 is not knowledge. A working hypothesis were not to be despised, 

 although the student of science might feel quite sure in advance 

 that when he had learned the truth in this department he would 

 throw the hypothesis away. A working hypothesis, like a scaffold, is 

 useful ; but a scaffold is not a wall. Art is not science. Art deals 

 with the appearances, science with the realities, of things. Art deals 

 with tlie external, science with the internal, of a thing ; art with the 

 phenomenon, science with the noumenon. It must be the " real truth " 

 which we know, and know truly. 



Weak men on both sides have done much harm the weak reli- 

 gionists by assuming, and the weak scientists by claiming, for guesses 

 and hypotheses, the high character and full value of real truth. The 

 guesses of both have collided in the air, and a real battle seemed im- 

 pending; but it was only " guesses " which exploded bubbles, not 

 bombs ; and it is never to be forgotten that a professor of religion 

 has just as much right to guess as a professor of science, and the lat- 

 ter no more right than the former, although he may have more skill. 



No man can abandon a real truth without degradation to his in- 

 tellectual and moral nature ; but Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, in their 

 studies from time to time, employed and discarded theory after the- 

 ory, until they reached that wbidi was capable of demonstration. It 

 was only that which took its place as science. In the case of Kepler, 

 it is known what great labor he spent in attempting to represent the 

 orbit of Mars by combinations of uniform circular motion. His 

 working hypothesis was the old doctrine of epicyclic curves. But his 

 great labor was not fruitless, as has been carelessly asserted. The 

 theory was false, and therefore not a part of real science ; but, work- 

 ing on it, he discovered that the orbit of Mars is an ellipse, and this 

 led him to the first of his three great laws of planetary motion, and 

 enabled him almost immediately to discover the second. Here was 

 a great intellect employing as a working hypothesis a theory which 

 has always been false, and now is demonstrably false. It was not 

 science. 



Now if, while scientific men are employing working hypotheses 

 merely as such, men representing religion fly at them as if they were 

 holding those hypotheses as science, or if men representing science do 

 set forth these hypotheses as if they were real knowledge of truth, 

 and proceed to defend them as such, then much harm is done in all 

 directions. 



In the first instance, the religious man shows an impatience which 

 is irreligious. " He that believeth doth not make haste." It is unfair 



