212 FKAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



theories formerly deemed unassailable. It is through 

 the physical and natural sciences that the fiercest as- 

 saults are now made on our religion. No more deadly 

 weapon is used against our faith than the facts incon- 

 testably proved by modern researches in science.' 



Such statements must be the reverse of comfortable 

 to a number of gentlemen who, trained in the philo- 

 sophy of Thomas Aquinas, have been accustomed to the 

 unquestioning submission of all other sciences to their 

 divine science of Theology. But this is not all: ' One 

 thing seems certain/ says the memorialists, viz., ' that 

 if chairs for the physical and natural sciences be not 

 soon founded in the Catholic University, very many 

 young men will have their faith exposed to dangers 

 which the creation of a school of science in the Uni- 

 versity would defend them from. For our generation 

 of Irish Catholics are writhing under the sense of their 

 inferiority in science, and are determined that such in- 

 feriority shall not long continue; and so, if scientific 

 training be unattainable at our University, they will seek 

 it at Trinity or at the Queen's Colleges, in not one of 

 which is there a Catholic Professor of Science.' 



Those who imagined the Catholic University at 

 Kensington to be due to the spontaneous recognition, 

 on the part of the Eoman hierarchy, of the intellectual 

 needs of the age, will derive enlightenment from this, 

 and still more from what follows: for the most formid- 

 able threat remains. To the picture of Catholic stu- 

 dents seceding to Trinity and the Queen's Colleges, the 

 memorialists add this darkest stroke of all: ' They will, 

 in the solitudes of their own homes, unaided by any 

 guiding advice, devour the works of Haeckel, Darwin, 

 Huxley, Tyndall, and Lyell; works innocuous if studied 

 under a professor who would point out the difference 

 between established facts and erroneous inferences, but 



