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ingly hard to define clearly, and in the heat of controvery is very apt to 

 be used so loosely that the results are frequently as damaging to one 

 party as the other. 



But it is not very clear to many why the word should be used at 

 all in the sense as generally understood. With its broader meaning, 

 doubtless, it would find scope in the realm of raetaphysies, but as 

 applied to the investigator after scientific truth, dealing onlv with 

 material things, it should certainly have no place. As for any man's 

 personal belief, that is an entirely different matter and one entirely 

 beyond the range of scientific investigation. 



The distinction between the terms agnostic and atheist, if these 

 terms must be retained, while it should be sharply drawn, is apt to be 

 confounded. An atheist, pure and simple, by which one understands a 

 person without belief in God, or in any supreme overruling power, is a 

 very rare beirig to encounter. Certainly they are very rarely found in 

 the ranks of the earnest workers in the field of Natural Science. The 

 greatest writers and students on these subjects do not hesitate when 

 necessary to express their belief in the existence of a first great cause 

 through which life was first introduced on the globe, and by whom all 

 things are controlled — known, indeed, under different names, such as 

 the Creator, the Infinite, Nature, the Power behind the veil, all of 

 which terms in point of fact resolve themselves into the same meaning 

 From the fact, however, that scientific problems are supposed to be 

 worked out by the aid of natural surroundings alone, and to be capable 

 of actual demonstration, this portion of their belief is not brought 

 prominently into notice, since there is no absolute occasion for its 

 intrusion, but its influence is everywhere apparent in the lives of our 

 most illustrious scientists. 



For many hundreds of years the expression Gnothi seautoa, 

 know thyself, has been familiar to the human race. Generation after 

 generation has been studying the problem this presented with some- 

 what indifferent success, and no one will to-day, I think, be so pre- 

 sumptuous as to say, that even in the study of the human frame and 

 of the phenomena which take place in the human body, have we yet 

 arrived at the perfection of knowledge. How much more presumptuous, 

 then, would it be to say that in any of the great fields of .science, art 





