510 Proceedings of the British Association. [OGtober, 
assert that which is not positively true, for in no other light will his address 
be intelligible. In either case the assertion is erroneous, and calculated to 
lower other men in popular esteem, and exalt Dr. Carpenter as the discoverer 
of an imposition. Such conduct is unworthy a man holding the position of 
President of the British Association. 
We will now examine the assumption upon which the whole of Dr. Carpenter’s 
address turns. He says, ‘‘I hope to satisfy you that those who setup their own 
conceptions of the orderly sequence which they discern in the phenomena of 
nature, as fixed and determinate laws, by which those phenomena not only 
are within all human experience, but always have been and always must be 
invariably governed, are really guilty of the intelle@ual arrogance they 
condemn in the systems of the ancients, and place themselves in diametrical 
antagonism to those real philosophers, by whose comprehensive grasp and 
penetrating insight that order has been so far disclosed.”” Who doset uptheirown 
conceptions as fixed and determinate laws ? Certainly not accredited scientific 
men, and yet upon the assumption that such men, and those who so strongly 
adhere to their own conceptions are the same, does Dr. Carpenter assail scientific 
men not only collectively, but individually. Dr. Carpenter’s remarks would 
be calculated to form a serious obstacle to the advancement of science, were 
it not that, to use his own words, judgment ‘‘ is eminently a personal a@, the 
value of its results depending in each case upon the qualifications of the 
individual for arriving at a correé& decision.” 
There is one convincing argument against the liability of error from indivi- 
dual interpretation which Dr. Carpenter has overlooked. Itis that philosophic 
principles are really not isolated, neither are they individual, for if each sub- 
ject be taken up by one man there remains sufficient diversity to prevent error 
in considering the conclusions collectively; but it happens that many men 
with many theories take up the same subject with concordant results. So that 
unless Dr. Carpenter flies dire@tly in the face of all received reasoning on pro- 
bability of error, which being of error includes probability of correctness, his 
remarks are childish. 
Dr. Carpenter further places great stress upon the invidious distin@ion be- 
tween “seems” and “really is,’ as regards the scientific interpretation of 
Nature. Has science been proved sufficiently inaccurate to warrant such a 
distin@ion? We think not, and that the distinction has been made by Dr. 
Carpenter on his own authority alone. Again, he tells us that ‘‘ the philoso- 
pher’s interpretation of Nature seems less individual than that of the artist or 
the poet ;’’ and proceeds to reason upon this ground,—a veritable quicksand, 
for whereas the artist and poet are allowed liberties on account of the ma- 
chinery they employ, the philosopher is allowed none, even while his machinery 
is of a more restricted order. Even generalisation Dr. Carpenter denies to the 
scientific enquirer, who employs generalisation as the artist does his rules of 
perspective or the poet the rules of prosody and grammar—that is, as a method 
of order. But the simile of artistic and poetic interpretation is in itself 
faulty, for the artist and poet are not required to represent Nature accurately, 
but only so far approximately as may affect the feelings, whilst the philosopher 
must most correctly trace Nature as she presents herself, if his interpretation is 
intended for the eyes of common-sense men or of men co-equal in scientific 
attainments, according to the speciality of the character of the phenomenon 
to be interpreted: the one is an appeal to the feelings, the other to the reason. 
The one calls not for accuracy, the other demands it. 
Dr. Carpenter is far from understanding the difference between laws made 
for men and those made by them: in the first there is not, and has never 
been, a cessation of the direGing force, whilst in the latter the law is not al- 
ways enforced. In the one case, given the same conditions the same results 
are.inevitable, because the origin is constant; but in the other the results vary 
with the origin. But this consideration brings us within the territory of The- 
ology, with which, in common with Dr. Carpenter, we, as professed scientific 
men, publicly have nothing to do; and as we do not recognise Dr. Carpenter 
in any way as an authority on this new point which he appears anxious to 
claim, we shall merely endorse the general belief that the boundaries of 
