244 DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 



In connection with this subject of scientific education, it will be re- 

 membered that during the past summer there assembled in this city 

 the National Convention of the Agassiz Association of America, an 

 organization mainly composed of pupils from the public schools and 

 students in college, and having for its principal object the study of the 

 natural sciences. All who attended the proceedings of this conven- 

 tion must have been struck with the decorum of its deliberations, and 

 greatly impressed with the accuracy of their knowledge and the wide 

 scope of their researches. It was certainly an extraordinary spectacle, 

 and the fact such a movement had become necessary to accomplish 

 objects so eminently desirable is, in itself, a most complete and em- 

 phatic condemnation of the existing systems of education. Who ever 

 heard of conventions being held to encourage and promote the study 

 of Latin, or Greek, or grammar, or logic, or rhetoric, or geography, or 

 history, or any other kindred studies usually found in the curricula of 

 our educational institutions? It is only left for neglected science to 

 thus force itself into prominence and place. 



This review of the work of the Academy would be incomplete with- 

 out some reference to the great question of religion as connected with 

 the researches of science. It has been wisely provided that topics of 

 a partizan or sectarian character shall not be introduced into the dis- 

 cussions of the Academy, but inasmuch as no nation nor race has ever 

 been found on this planet without some form of worship, the anthrop- 

 ologist must needs accept religion as a scientific fact. It is usual, I 

 know, to approach these questions with bated breath, and to handle 

 them with a velvety touch, but I am unable to see why God's word 

 should be more sacred than his works, or why His creation is less en- 

 titled to reverence than His revelation. If these relations have been 

 unfriendly, it is because of empiricism in science and bigotry in relig- 

 ion. The severe student of science, it is true, may find that his math- 

 ematical training will not enable him to unravel the tangle of the 

 trinity, that his mastery of logic is wholly inadequate to the reconcilia- 

 tion of foreknowledge, free-will, and predestination, and that his pro- 

 found study into the wise adaptations and beautiful harmonies of the 

 created universe disclose no fitting place for the location of that abyss 

 of eternal fire said to have been provided for intellectual unbelief, and 

 thus when he tears down these "fine spun ecclesiastical cobwebs," he 

 too often makes the mistake to throw away with them all religion, but 

 he should consider that its essentials still remain, the incentive to good 

 conduct and correct living, reverence for God's work and word, and 

 the expectation of immortal life. On the other hand, when Tyndall 

 tells of matter so richly endowed as to have in it "the promise and po- 

 tency of all life," and when Huxley announces that protoplasm* is the 

 common foundation of all forms of life, and when Darwin seeks to ac- 

 count for "the origin of species" by his famous hypothesis of evolu- 

 tion, the ecclesiastic in his fright cries aloud against the scepticism of 

 science, but he should consider that the beautiful phenomena disclosed 

 by their researches only add to the unexplained wonders of creation, 

 and do not touch the mysteries of time and space, of matter and mind, 



