THE B EL FAS? ADDRESS. 49 1 
range of play. The wise teacher of humanity will recognize 
the necessity of meeting this demand, rather than of resist- 
ing it on account of errors and absurdities of form. What 
we should resist, at all hazards, is the attempt made in the 
past, and now repeated, to found upon this elemental bias 
of man's nature a system which should exercise despotic 
sway over his intellect. 1 have no fear of such a consum- 
mation. Science has already to some extent leavened the 
world; it will leaven it more and more. I should look 
upon the mild light of science breaking in upon the minds 
of the youth of Ireland, andstrengthenirig,gradually to the 
perfect day, as a surer check to any intellectual or spiritual 
tyranny which may threaten this island, than the laws of 
princes or the swords of emperors. We fought and won 
our battle even in the middle ages: should we doubt the 
issue of another conflict with our broken foe? 
The impregnable position of science may be described in 
a few words. We claim, and we shall wrest from theology, 
the entire domain of cosmological theory. All schemes 
and systems which thus infringe upon the domain of 
science must, in so far as they do this, submit to its con- 
trol, and relinquish all thought of controlling it. Acting 
otherwise proved always disastrous in the past, and it is 
simply fatuous to-day. Every system which would escape 
the fate of an organism too rigid to adjust itself to its 
environment, must be plastic to the extent that the growth 
of knowledge demands. When this truth has been 
thoroughly taken in, rigidity will be relaxed, exclusiveness 
diminished, things now deemed essential will be dropped, 
and elements now rejected will be assimilated. The lifting 
of the life is the essential point; and as long as dogmatism, 
fanaticism, and intolerance are kept out, various modes of 
leverage may be employed to raise life to a higher level. 
Science itself not unfrequently derives motive power 
from an ultra-scientific source. Some of its greatest dis- 
coveries have been made under the the stimulus of a non- 
scientific ideal. This was the case among the ancients, 
and it has been so among ourselves. Mayer, Joule, and 
Coldjug, whose names are associated with The greatest of 
modern generalizations, were thus influenced. With his 
usual insight, Lange at one place remarks, that " it is not 
always the objectively correct and intelligible that helps 
man most, or leads most quickly to the fullest and truest 
