736 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. [CHAP 



nitrogen and phosphorus. No apparent limit exists to the 

 success of scientific method in weighing and measuring, 

 and reducing beneath the sway of law, the phenomena both 

 of matter and of mind. And if mental phenomena be thus 

 capable of treatment by the balance and the micrometer, 

 can we any longer hold that mind is distinct from matter ? 

 Must not the same inexorable reign of law which is 

 apparent in the motions of brute matter be extended to the 

 subtle feelings of the human heart ? Are not plants and 

 animals, and ultimately man himself, merely crystals, as it 

 were, of a complicated form ? If so, our boasted free will 

 becomes a delusion, moral responsibility a fiction, spirit a 

 mere name for the more curious manifestations of material 

 energy. All that happens, whether right or wrong, plea- 

 surable or painful, is but the outcome of the necessary 

 relations of time and space and force. 



Materialism seems, then, to be the coming religion, and 

 resignation to the nonentity of human will the only duty. 

 Such may not generally be the reflections of men of 

 science, but I believe that we may thus describe the 

 secret feelings of fear which the constant advance of 

 scientific investigation excites in the minds of many. Is 

 science, then, essentially atheistic and materialistic in its 

 tendency ? Does the uniform action of material causes, 

 which we learn with an ever-increasing approximation to 

 certainty, preclude the hypothesis of a benevolent Creator, 

 who has not only designed the existing universe, but who 

 still retains the power to alter its course from time 

 to time? 



To enter upon actual theological discussions would be 

 evidently beyond the scope of this work. It is with the 

 scientific method common to all the sciences, and not with 

 any of the separate sciences, that we are concerned. 

 Theology therefore would be at least as much beyond 

 my scope as chemistry or geology. But I believe that 

 grave misapprehensions exist as regards the very nature 

 of scientific method. There are scientific men who assert 

 that the interposition of Providence is impossible, and 

 prayer an absurdity, because the laws of nature are in- 

 ductively proved to be invariable. Inferences are drawn 

 not so much from particular sciences as from the logical 

 nature of science itself, to negative the impulses and 



