200 FBAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



set forth. As regards myself, they are not the growth 

 of a day ; and as regards you, I thought you ought to 

 know the environment which, with or without your 

 consent, is rapidly surrounding you, and in relation to 

 which some adjustment on your part may be necessary. 

 A hint of Hamlet's, however, teaches us how the 

 troubles of common life may be ended ; and it is 

 perfectly possible for you and me to purchase intel- 

 lectual peace at the price of intellectual death. The 

 world is not without refuges of this description ; nor 

 is it wanting in persons who seek their shelter, and try 

 to persuade others to do the same. The unstable and 

 the weak have yielded and will yield to this persuasion, 

 and they to whom repose is sweeter than the truth. 

 But I would exhort you to refuse the offered shelter, 

 and to scorn the base repose to accept, if the choice 

 be forced upon you, commotion before stagnation, the 

 breezy leap of the torrent before the foetid stillness of 

 the swamp. In the course of this Address I have 

 touched on debatable questions, and led you over what 

 will be deemed dangerous ground and this partly with 

 the view of telling you that, as regards these questions, 

 science claims unrestricted right of search. It is not 

 to the point to say that the views of Lucretius and 

 Bruno, of Darwin and Spencer, may be wrong. Here I 

 should agree with you, deeming it indeed certain that 

 these views will undergo modification. But the point 

 is, that, whether right or wrong, we claim the right to 

 discuss them. For science, however, no exclusive claim 

 is here made ; you are not urged to erect it into an 

 idol. The inexorable advance of man's understanding 

 in the path of knowledge, and those unquenchable claims 

 of his moral and emotional nature, which the under- 

 standing can never satisfy, are here equally set forth. 

 The world embraces not only a Newton, but a Shak- 



