PRESIDENT NEWCOMB. 9 



I 



already said, the test of scientific advance is the power of fore- 

 sight of foreseeing what result any combination of circumstances 

 will lead to. If we always had to wait for the result, and could 

 then only say, I know this is the result which was intended, be- 

 cause it has happened, no actual foresight would be possible ; and 

 however excellent the doctrine might be SOB a theological one, it 

 would not admit of being tested by observation and experiment, 

 and the question of its truth would, therefore, not admit of being 

 settled by scientific investigation. 



You may recall the remark of a satirical philosopher, when he 

 saw the gifts which those who escaped the dangers of a certain 

 treacherous and stormy sea offered up to the goddess who had this 

 sea at her command: "I see no offerings from those who were 

 lost," said he. It was not till the voyager had got safely to shore 

 that he found himself under the protection of the goddess. 



It must be well understood that the teleological theory of nature, 

 or, as it is now familiarly called, the explanation of natural phe- 

 nomena by design, has two distinct forms, the scientific, and the 

 theological. These forms are not antagonistic ones ; the one 

 held by scientific men, and the other by theologians ; for, as you 

 may well know, the scientific form is the one in which scientific 

 men almost universally reject the teleological theory, while they 

 have nothing to say against the other forms. The forms refer 

 only to the fields to which the theory may belong, the scientific 

 and the theological. The distinction turns, on whether we sup- 

 pose the ends which the Creator has in view to be discoverable by 

 scientific investigation, or to be inscrutable. Only in the former 

 case have we, as scientific investigators, anything to do with the 

 question. The theory, as we have to consider it, is in brief this : 

 that the course of events in inanimate nature is from time to time 

 modified by invisible intelligences just as it is modified by man 

 when he changes the course of a river or plants a forest. 



The other explanation of nature is the mechanical one. It 

 assumes that her processes go on in accordance with certain laws 

 which admit of being fully comprehended by the human mind so 

 far as their effects are concerned. Each state of things is the 

 effect of the state which immediately precedes it, and the cause of 

 that which immediately follows it. The course of nature is thus 

 considered as an endless chain, of which the work of science con- 

 sists in making out the forms of the links, and the modes, in which 



