686 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



chase intellectual peace at the price of intellectual death. The world 

 is not without refuges of this description ; nor is it wanting in persons 

 who seek their shelter and try to persuade others to do the same. I 

 would exhort you to refuse such shelter, and to scorn such base repose 

 — to accept, if the choice be forced upon you, commotion before stag- 

 nation, the leap of the torrent before tlie stillness of the swamp. In 

 the one there is at all events life, and therefore hope ; in the other, 

 none. I have touched on debatable questions, and led you over dan- 

 gerous ground — and this partly with the view of telling you, and 

 through you the world, that as regards these questions science claims 

 unrestricted right of search. It is not to the point to say that the 

 views of Lucretius and Bruno, of Darwin and Spencer, may be wrong. 

 Here I should agree with you, deeming it indeed certain that these 

 views will undergo modification. But the point is, that, whether 

 right or wrong, we claim the freedom to discuss them. The ground 

 which they cover is scientific ground ; and the right claimed is one 

 made good through tribulation and anguish, inflicted and endured in 

 darker times than ours, but resulting in the immortal Victories which 

 science has won for the human race. I would set forth equally the 

 inexorable advance of man's understanding in the path of knowledge, 

 and the unquenchable claims of his emotional nature which the under- 

 standing can never satisfy. The world embraces not only a Newton, 

 but a Shakespeare — not only a Boyle, but a Raphael — not only a Kant, 

 but a Beethoven — not only a Darwin, but a Carlyle. Not in each of 

 these, but in all, is human nature whole. They are not opposed, but 

 supplementary — not mutually exclusive, but reconcilable. And if, 

 still unsatisfied, the human mind, with the yearning of a pilgrim for 

 his distant home, will turn to the mystery from which it has emerged, 

 seeking so to fashion it as to give unity to thought and faith, so long 

 as this is done, not only without intolerance or bigotry of any kind, 

 but with the enlightened recognition that ultimate fixity of concep- 

 tion is here unattainable, and that each succeeding age must be held 

 free to fashion the mystery in accordance with its own needs — then, 

 in opposition to all the restrictions of materialism, I would afiirm this 

 to be a field for the noblest exercise of what, in contrast with the 

 knowing faculties, may be called the creative faculties of man. Here, 

 however, I must quit a theme too great for me to handle, but which 

 will be handled by the loftiest minds ages after you and I, like streaks 

 of morning cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past. 



