December 22, 1921] 



NATURE 



535 



sphere. Thus may the forces of modern civilisa- 

 tion, moral and material, be brought together, and 

 an allied plan of campaign be instituted against 

 the armies of ignorance and sloth. The service is 

 that of truth, the discipline that of scientific inves- 

 tigation, and the unifying aim human well-being. 

 Kingsley long ago expressed the democratic basis 

 upon which this fellowship is founded ; and 

 when he delivered his message artisans were 

 crowding in thousands in Manchester and other 

 populous places to lectures by leaders in the scien- 

 tific world of that time. Labour then welcomed 

 science as its ally in the struggle for civil rights 

 and spiritual liberty. That battle has been fought 

 and won, and subjects in bitter dispute fifty years 

 ago now repose in the limbo of forgotten things. 



There is no longer a conflict between religion 

 and science, and labour can assert its claims in the 

 market-place or council house without fear of 

 repression. Science is likewise free to pursue its 

 own researches and apply its own principles and 

 methods within the realm of observable pheno- 

 mena, and it does not desire to usurp the functions 

 of faith in sacred dogmas to be perpetually 

 retained and infallibly declared. The Royal 

 Society of London was founded for the extension 

 of natural knowledge in contra-distinction to the 

 supernatural, and it is content to leave other 

 philosophers to describe the world beyond the 

 domain of observation and experiment. When, 

 however, phenomena belonging to the natural 

 world are made subjects of supernatural revelation 

 or uncritical inquiry, science has the right to pre- 

 sent an attitude of suspicion towards them. Its 

 only interest in mysteries is to discover the natural 

 meaning of them. It does not need messages 

 from the spirit world to acquire a few elementary 

 facts relating to the stellar universe, and it must 

 ask for resistless evidence before observations 

 contrary to all natural law are accepted as scien- 

 tific truth. If there are circumstances in which 

 matter may be divested of the property of mass, 

 fairies may be photographed, lucky charms may 

 determine physical events, magnetic people dis- 

 turb compass needles, and so on, by all means 

 let them be investigated, but the burden of proof 

 is upon those who believe in them and every 

 witness will be challenged at the bar of scientific 

 opinion. 



We do not want to go back to the days when i 

 absolute credulity was inculcated as a virtue and 

 doubt punished as a crime. It is easy to find in 

 works of uncritical observers of medieval times 

 most circumstantial accounts of all kinds of 

 astonishing manifestations, but we are not com- 

 pelled to accept the records as scientifically accu- 

 rate and to provide natural explanations of them. 

 We need not doubt the sincerity of the observer 

 even when we decline to accept his testimony as 

 scientific truth. The maxim that '* seeing is 

 believing " may be sound enough doctrine for the 

 majority of people, but it is insufficient as a prin- 

 ciple of scientific inquiry. For thousands of years 

 it led men to believe that the earth was the centre 



NO. 2721, VOL. 108] 



of the universe, with the sun and other celestial 

 bodies circling round it, and controlling the 

 destiny of man, yet what seemed obvious was 

 shown by Copernicus to be untrue. This was the 

 beginning of the liberation of human life and 

 intellect from the maze of puerile description and 

 philosophic conception. Careful observation and 

 crucial experiment later took the place of personal 

 assertion and showed that events in Nature are 

 determined by permanent law and are not subject 

 to haphazard changes by supernatural agencies. 

 When this position was gained by science, belief 

 in astrology, necromancy, and sorcery of every 

 kind began to decline, and men learned that they 

 were masters of their own destinies. The late 

 war is responsible for a recrudescence of these 

 medieval superstitions, but if natural science is 

 true to the principles by which it has advanced it 

 will continue to bring to bear upon them the 

 piercing light by which civilised man was freed 

 from their baleful consequences. 



There is abundant need for the use of the 

 intellectual enlightenment which science can 

 supply to counteract the ever-present tendency of 

 humanity to revert to primitive ideas. Fifty 

 years of compulsory education are but a moment 

 in the history of man's development, and their 

 influence is as nothing in comparison with instincts 

 derived from our early ancestors and traditions of 

 more recent times grafted upon them. So little is 

 known of science that to most people old women's 

 tales or the unsupported words of a casual on- 

 looker are as credible as the statements and con- 

 clusions of the most careful observers. Where 

 exact knowledge exists, however, to place opinion 

 by the side of fact is to blow a bubble into a flame. 

 Within its own domain science is concerned not 

 with belief — except as a subject of inquiry — but 

 with evidence. It claims the right to test all 

 things in order to be able to hold fast to that 

 which is good. It declines to accept popular 

 beliefs as to thunderbolts ; living frogs and toads 

 embedded in blocks of coal or other hard rock 

 without an opening, though the rock was formed 

 millions of years ago and all fossils found in it are 

 crushed as flat as paper ; the inheritance of 

 microbic diseases ; the production of rain by ex- 

 plosions when the air is far removed from its 

 saturation point ; the influence of the moon on the 

 weather or of underground water upon a twig held 

 by a dowser, and dozens of like fallacies, solely 

 because when weighed in the balance they have 

 been found wanting in scientific truth. Its only 

 interest in mysteries is that of inquiring into them 

 and finding a natural reason for them. Mystery 

 is thus not destroyed by knowledge but removed 

 to a higher plane. 



Never let it be acknowledged that science 

 destroys imagination, for the reverse is the truth. 

 " The Gods are dead," said W. E. Henley, 



" the world, a world of prose, 

 Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted, 

 Nods in a stertorous after-dinner drze ! 

 Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows 

 Who will may hear th*^ sorry words lepeated : — 

 ' '1 he go^s are dead.'" 



