APOLOGY FOR TIIK BELFAST ADDRESS. 499 



chimeras, which astound all thinking men, it did not 

 appear to me extravagant to claim the public tolerance 

 for an hour and a half, for the statement of more reason- 

 able views views more in accordance with the verities 

 which science has brought to light, and which many weary 

 souls would, I thought, welcome with gratification and 

 relief. 



But to come to closer quarters. The expression to 

 which the most violent exception has been taken is this: 

 "Abandoning all disguise, the confession I feel bound to 

 make before you is, that I prolong the vision backward 

 across the boundary of the experimental evidence, and 

 discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance, and 

 notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, 

 have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and 

 potency of every form and quality of life." To call it a 

 "chorus of dissent," as my Catholic critic does, is a mild 

 way of describing the storm of opprobrium with which 

 this statement has been assailed. But the first blast of 

 passion being past, I hope I may again ask my opponents 

 to consent to reason. First of all, I am blamed for cross- 

 ing the boundary of the experimental evidence. This, I 

 reply, is the habitual action of the scientific mind at least 

 of that portion of it which applies itself to physical inves- 

 tigation. Our theories of light, heat, magnetism, and 

 electricity, all imply the crossing of this boundary. My 

 paper on the " Scientific Use of the Imagination," arid my 

 " Lectures on Light," illustrate this point in the amplest 

 manner; and in the article entitled " Matter and Force " 

 in the present volume I have sought, incidentally, to make 

 clear, that in physics the experiential incessantly leads 

 to the ultra-experiential; that out of experience there 

 always grows something finer than mere experience, and 

 that in their different powers of ideal extension consists, 

 for the most part, the difference between the great and the 

 mediocre investigator. The kingdom of science, then, 

 comcth not by observation and experiment alone, but is 

 completed by fixing the roots of observation and experiment 

 in a region inaccessible to both, and in dealing with which 

 we are forced to fall back upon the picturing power of the 

 mind. 



Passing the boundary of experience, therefore, does not, 

 in the abstract, constitute a sufficient ground for censure. 



