212 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



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,' say 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 dan- 

 gers which the creation of a school of science in the 

 University would defend them from. For our genera- 

 tion of Irish Catholics are writhing under the sense of 

 their inferiority in science, and are determined that such 

 inferiority 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 Roman 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 solitude 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 

 which are calculated to sap the faith of a solitary stu- 

 dent, deprived of a discriminating judgment to which 

 he could refer for a solution of his difficulties.* 



