THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



FEBRUARY, 1876. 



THE WARFAEE OF SCIENCE. 



By ANDEEW D. WHITE, LL. D., 



PEESIDENT OF CORNELL TJNIVEESITY. 

 I. 



I PURPOSE to present an outline of the gveat, sacred struggle for 

 the liberty of science a struggle which has lasted for so many 

 centuries, and which yet continues. A hard contest it has been ; a 

 war waged longer, with battles fiercer, with sieges more persistent, 

 with strategy more shrewd than in any of the comparatively petty 

 warfares of Caesar or Napoleon or Moltke. 



I shall ask you to go with me through some of the most protract- 

 ed sieges, and over some of the hardest-fought battle-fields of this 

 war. We will look well at the combatants ; we will listen to the bat- 

 tle-cries ; we will note the strategy of leaders, the cut and thrust of 

 champions, the weight of missiles, the temper of weapons. 



My thesis, which, by an historical study of this warfare, I expect 

 to develop, is the following : In all modern history, interference with 

 science in the supposed interest of religion, vo matter Jioio conscien- 

 tious such interference inay have been, has resulted in the direst evils 

 both to religion and to science, and invariably. And, on the other 

 hand, all untrammeled scieyitiflc investigation, no matter how dan- 

 gerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed, for the time, 

 to be, has invariably residted in the highest good of religion and of 

 science. I say " invariably." I mean exactly that. It is a rule to 

 which history shows not one exception 



It would seem, logically, that this statement cannot be gainsaid. 

 God's truths must agree, whether discovered by looking within upon 

 the soul, or without upon the world. A truth written upon the hu- 

 man heart to-day, in its full play of emotions or passions, cannot be 



' In its earlier form this address was given as a Phi Beta Kappa oration at Brown 

 University, and as a lecture at New York, Boston, New Haven, Ann Arbor, and else- 

 where. 



VOL. VIII. 25 



