96 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Now, what has this to do with us? What connection has it 

 with our work? If science teaching has any educational value, the 

 most definite and direct connection. 1 shall not do you the injus- 

 tice of supposing that any tendency I have named did not at once 

 bear to you its proper suggestion. If it has failed, the fault has 

 been in the presentation of a very simple matter. For every peril- 

 ous tendency I have mentioned has its life in direct violation of the 

 essential principles of science study, and may be restrained by 

 extending the knowledge and habitual use of those principles. 



I do not wish to claim for science work an unwarranted value 

 in this respect, nor to deny the influence of other subjects in bring- 

 ing about a moral evolution. It is true that history warns us by 

 examples, that it points us to the failure of free governments in 

 whose steps to destruction many of us seem only too willing to 

 follow. It is true that we can learn from Rome the results of im- 

 perialism ; from France, of irreverence ; from Spain, of tyranny. In 

 other fields of learning we may find other lessons of present value. 

 But to meet the dangers that just now assail us, the national weak- 

 nesses that I have enumerated, the scientific studies seem especially 

 fitted. 



" The great peculiarity of scientific training," says Huxley, 

 " that in virtue of which it can not be replaced by any other dis- 

 cipline whatsoever, is the bringing of the mind directly into con- 

 tact with fact, and practicing the intellect in the completest form 

 of induction — that is to say, in drawing conclusions from particu- 

 lar facts made known by immediate observation of Nature." " The 

 bringing of the mind into contact with fact." This means the 

 recognition of the existence of incontrovertible truth. The dawn- 

 ing knowledge of such truth must bring with it the consciousness 

 that much that we have always accepted as truth is open to ques- 

 tion. Thus every belief, no matter what its nature, is in time sub- 

 jected to examination. If it stand, it stands because it is able to 

 bear this searching scrutiny and to answer fairly the questions of 

 honest doubt. Honest doubt may be the result of honest reason- 

 ing; it must absolutely demand honest reasoning to satisfy it. 

 This exercise of the rational faculty, then, depends upon and re- 

 sults from an awakened love of truth. How directly do these 

 most obvious principles of scientific investigation bear upon the 

 facts we have been considering! How flatly do they forbid us to 

 be carried away into excesses! Let us apply them briefly, point 

 by point. 



If love of truth and appeal to reason mean anything at all, they 

 mean, first of all, eternal opposition to the power of unthinking 

 passion — of blind feeling. They mean that every sentiment should 



