8 THE CONDUCT OF 



of an eternal, self-existent matter, by giving to each of its atoms the 

 essential characters at once of a 7namifactured article and a sub- 

 ordinate agentr He then states with such clearness the terms of 

 his apprehension of the transition from the physical to the moral 

 causation of nature, that their quotation will at once suggest our 

 fourth question. " The physiologist," he says, "is forced by daily 

 experience to recognise the mutual convertibility of physical and 

 moral agency ; the pricking of our skin with a pin producing a 

 change in our state of feeling ; and a mental determination calling 

 a muscle, or set of muscles, into a contraction which generates 

 mechanical power. And thus a bridge of connection is estab- 

 lished between physical and moral causation which enables us to 

 pass without any sense of interruption or inconsistency from the 

 scientific to the theological interpretation of nature." 



Our fourth question, then, is " Has the material universe been 

 created, and is it now sustained and governed, by a first cause ? " 

 Now, I am not going to enter upon any argument of a theological 

 character upon this point. I do not forget also that the subject of 

 this paper is " The Conduct of Scientific Inquiry." On the 

 contrary, the closing point I am most anxious to try to establish is 

 that the object which claims first attention in scientific inquiry is, 

 that to which generally very little is paid. I might proceed on the 

 lines laid down by Beale, Stokes, or Carpenter for the theological 

 interpretation of physical causation, but prefer not. Let us 

 give only a strictly intellectual consideration to the matter. It 

 will stand the test. I ask, then, whether it is a scientific 

 method of procedure, when a man employs his intellect as the 

 instrument with which he carries on his investigation in natural 

 phenomena, never to have made it previously turn in upon itself, 

 that it may know what is its natural attitude {i.e., the bent given by 

 early training) towards the object of its inquiry — and not to demand 

 of itself proof of its own power to correctly interpret results ? A 

 true scientist should, surely, first of all, submit his mental faculties 

 to a scientific examination of those powers that are absolutely 

 indispensable to his work. Error in the method of their use must 

 lead to error in their deductions. It ought also to be a settled 

 thing with him to what he attributes the existence of those powers. 



A celebrated American has said, that scientific thought is the 



