1868.] NEWBERRY. — SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION. 279 



evil and inscrutable disease that has fallen upon the minds and 

 hearts of men. 



Now for every consequence there must be an adequate cause ; 

 and while confessing the fact of this modern lack of faith, I have 

 thought that a few moments given to an analysis of it, and an 

 attempt to trace it to its source, might not be wholly misspent — 

 might possibly, indeed, result in giving a grain of encouragement 

 to those who look with distrust and dread upon the investigations 

 and discussions which now occupy so large a portion of the time 

 and thought of our men of science. 



If the wheels of time could, for our benefit, be rolled back, and 

 we could see in all its details the civilization of Europe three or 

 four hundred years ago, we should find that our so much respected 

 ancestors, who fill so large a space on the page of history, were 

 little better than barbarians. Among the English, the French, 

 the Germans, Spanish and Italians, we should find a phase of 

 civilization which, excepting that it included the elements — as yet 

 but imperfectly developed — of a true religious faith, is scarcely to 

 be preferred to that of the Chinese. Aside from the vast differ- 

 ence perceptible between the civilization of that epoch and ours, 

 as exhibited in the political condition of the people, in their social 

 economy and morals, the general intellectual darkness of the 

 period referred to could not fail to impress us both profoundly 

 and painfully. Out of that darkness and chaos have come, as if 

 by magic, all our modern democracy with its individual liberty 

 and dignity, all our civil and religious freedom, all our philan- 

 thropy and benevolence, all our diffused comfort and luxury, most 

 of our good manners and good morals, and all the splendid achieve- 

 ments of our modern scientific investigation. 



It is unnecessary for me here to describe in detail the origin and 

 growth of modern science. That has been so well done by Dr. 

 Whewell that all men of education^ are familiar with the steps by 

 which the grand, beautiful, and symmetrical fabric formed by the 

 grouping of the natural sciences has acquired its present lofty 

 proportions. 



Previous to the period when the Baconian philosophy was 

 accepted as a guide in scientific investigation, but one department 

 of science had attained a development which has any considerable 

 claim to our respect. Mathematics, both pure and applied, had 

 been assiduously cultivated from the remotest antiquity, and with 

 a degree of success which has left to modern investigators little 



