8o2 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MO XT ELY. 



natnral sciences ; and as the latter, very far removed from absolute perfection 

 as they still are, Lave rendered popular, and after a manner indisputable, a cer- 

 tain number of general facts or fundamental theses of cosmology and geology, it 

 is the sacred text that they strive to torture in order to make it agree with these 

 data.] 



In my paper on the "Interpreters of Nature and the Interpreters 

 of Genesis," while freely availing myself of the rights of a scientific 

 critic, I endeavored to keep the expression of my views well within 

 those bounds of courtesy which are set by self-respect and considera- 

 tion for others. I am therefore glad to be favored with Mr. Glad- 

 stone's acknowledgment of the success of my efforts. I only wish 

 that I could accept all the products of Mr. Gladstone's gracious appre- 

 ciation, but there is one about which, as a matter of honesty, I hesi- 

 tate. In fact, if I had expressed my meaning better than I seem to 

 have done, I doubt if this particular proffer of Mr. Gladstone's thanks 

 would have been made. 



To my mind, whatever doctrine professes to be the result of the ap- 

 plication of the accepted rules of inductive and deductive logic to its 

 subject-matter, and accepts, within the limits which it sets to itself, 

 the supremacy of reason, is science. "Whether the subject-matter con- 

 sists of realities or unrealities, truths or falsehoods, is quite another 

 question. I conceive that ordinary geometry is science, by reason of 

 its method, and I also believe that its axioms, definitions, and conclu- 

 sions are all true. However, there is a geometry of four dimensions, 

 which I also believe to be science, because its method professes to be 

 strictly scientific. It is true that I can not conceive four dimensions 

 in space, and therefore, for me, the whole affair is unreal. But I have 

 known men of great intellectual powers who seemed to have no diffi- 

 culty either in conceiving them, or, at any rate, in imagining how they 

 could conceive them, and therefore four-dimensioned geometry comes 

 under my notion of science. So I think astrology is a science, in so far 

 as it professes to reason logically from principles established by just in- 

 ductive methods. To prevent misunderstanding, perhaps I had better 

 add that I do not believe one whit in astrology ; but no more do I be- 

 lieve in Ptolemaic astronomy, or in the catastrophic geology of my 

 youth, although these, in their day, claimed — and, to my mind, rightly 

 claimed — the name of science. If nothing is to be called science but 

 that which is exactly true from beginning to end, I am afraid there is 

 very little science in the world outside mathematics. Among the physi- 

 cal sciences I do not know that any could claim more than that each is 

 true within certain limits, so narrow that, for the present at any rate, 

 they may be neglected. If such is the case, I do not see where the 

 line is to be drawn between exactly true, partially true, and mainly 

 untrue forms of science. And what I have said about the current 

 theology at the end of my paper, leaves, I think, no doubt as to the 

 category in which I rank it. For all that, I think it would be not 



