THE LAWS OF NATURE. 551 



such a violation of natural law. Now i! is a part of it. What shall 

 we say. again, about telepathy, which seemed so absurd to most of us 

 a dozen years ago? I do not say there is such a thing now, but I 

 would like to take the occasion to express my feeling that Sir William 

 Crookes, as president of the British Association, took the right, as he 

 took the courageous course, in speaking of it in the terms he did. 

 I might cite other things, the objects of ridicule only a few years ago, 

 of debate now. but which have not ail found supporters who possess 

 the courage of their convictions. 



The lesson for us in dealing with them is not that we should refuse 

 to believe on the one hand, and sneer at everything that is on trial; 

 for this, though a very general and safe procedure, is not one to 

 he recommended to those of us who have some higher ideal than 

 acquiescence with the current belief. 



The lesson for us is that we must not consider that anything is abso- 

 lutely settled or true. 



This is not to say that we are to he blown about by every wind of 

 scientific doctrine. It is to be understood as a practical rule of life 

 that we must act with the majority where our faith does not compel 

 us to do otherwise; hut it seems to me that we must always keep 

 ready for use somewhere; in the background of our mind, possibly, 

 but somewhere; the perhaps trite notion that we know nothing abso- 

 lutely or in its essence: and remember that though trite it is always 

 true, and to be kept as a guide at every turning of the scientific road, 

 when we can not tell what is coming next. 



How many doctrines of our own day will stand the light of the next 

 century '. What will they be saying of our doctrine of evolution tht nf 

 1 do not know; but let me repeat what I have said elsewhere, that the 

 truths of the scientific church are not dogmas, but something put for- 

 ward as provisional only, and which her most faithful children are 

 welcome to disprove if they can. I believe that science as a whole is 

 advancing with hitherto unknown rapidity, but that the evidence of 

 this advance is not in reasoning, but in the observation that our doc- 

 trine is proving itself, by the fact that through its aid Nature obeys us 

 more and more, as T certainly believe it does. 



Never let us forget, however, that man. being the servant and inter- 

 >reter of nature. ;:■; Bacon says, can do and understand so much, and 

 so much only, as he has obsi rved of the course of nature, .and that 

 beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything. No 

 walk along 'the high priori road' will take him where he wants to 

 go, and no 'law of nature' will certainly help him. 



But these 'laws', having authority only as far as they are settled 

 by evidence and by observation alone, it may be a just inquiry as to 

 what constitutes observation and, above all. who judges the evidence. 



