376 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that lay "beMiid and beyond tlie facts, their possible bearings on 

 man's deepest yearnings and snblimest hopes, which gave dig- 

 nity and meaning to the humblest researches into rocks and 

 plants." A little definition would come in well here. What are 

 the interests that lie beyond the facts ? "What are man's deepest 

 yearnings ? What are his snblimest hopes ? Are his snblimest 

 hopes .also his best-founded and most rational hopes ? Are his 

 deepest yearnings at all of a practical character ? If these yearn- 

 ings can be appeased at all by scientific conclusions, why not by 

 those arrived at in our day as well as by the less correct ones 

 arrived at in former days ? Finally, what can science do more 

 than put the most rational construction on facts ? If more than 

 this is wanted — some surplusage of belief — it can be got from 

 other quarters ; science should not be held responsible for fur- 

 nishing it, or blamable for not furnishing it. Miss Cobbe does not 

 seem to be of this opinion, however. . She says that, as " Science 

 has repeatedly renounced all pretension to throw light in any 

 direction beyond the sequence of physical causes and effects, she 

 has . . . abandoned her claim to be man's guide to truth." But 

 surely, if at any time in the past Science made good her claim to 

 transcend the sequence of physical causes and effects, we need not 

 concern ourselves with her present denegation of authority in 

 the higher region. If a teacher has really succeeded in teaching 

 us the calculus, we need not trouble ourselves much if he should 

 at some future time take it into his head that he never knew it 

 himself. Supposing even that he never did know it, and that we 

 only worked into it by the aid of his blunders, does not our 

 knowledge remain ? And what, in that case, can we do better 

 than turn round and teach our teacher ? On the other hand, 

 if our teacher never knew what he thought he knew, and if we 

 never learned what we thought we had learned, what can we both 

 do better than acknowledge the true state of the case, and begin 

 over again, should it seem desirable ? 



We are told that Darwin " has destroyed, for those who accept 

 his views, the possibility for a rational reverence for the dictates 

 of conscience." How ? By raising a doubt as to " whether the 

 convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the 

 mind of the lower animals, are of any value." We should sup- 

 pose that, the further back an organism could be traced, the more 

 authority might be attached to what seem to be its laws. Who 

 would not much rather trust a conscience that had a long history 

 behind it, one stretching back even into the brute creation, than 

 a brand-new article of whose genesis no satisfactory account could 

 be given ? Moreover, how is it that we think so little of another 

 man's conscience when it enjoins acts of which we disapprove ; 

 and that he thinks so little of ours when it enjoins acts of which 



