THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 197 



ing, in the region of poetry and emotion, inward com- 

 pleteness and dignity to man. 



Feeling, I say again, dates from as old an origin 

 and as high a source of intelligence, and it equally 

 demands its range of play. The wise teacher of hu- 

 manity will recognise the necessity of meeting this de- 

 mand, rather than of resisting 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. I 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, and strengthening 

 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 de- 

 scribed in a few words. We claim, and we shall wrest 

 from theology, the entire domain of cosmological the- 

 ory. All schemes and systems which thus infringe upon 

 the domain of science must, in so far as they do this, 

 submit to its control, and relinquish all thought of con- 

 trolling 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, exclufciveness diminished, things now 



