76 Tlie Scientific Method. 



ABSTRACT OF THE DISCUSSION. 



MR. GEORGE ILKS : 



Among the recent decisions by that supreme court of reason -which 

 Dr. Abbot has so impressively described to us is the one which this 

 society exists to teach and to enlarge evolution. As that truth has 

 dawned upon the world, the atmosphere of controversy has undergone 

 a notable change. Old elements of irritation have melted away, and 

 the clearing air gives inquiry a keener edge than it ever had. Before 

 the latter half of this century, when, for example, a man of science 

 argfied with a theologian about miracles, the debate was apt to turn 

 upon the direct issue of truth or error. The man of science would ad- 

 duce grounds for holding that miracles never did or could happen, and 

 very probably add to his case the innuendo that belief in miracles was 

 based on fraud and sustained by willful ignorance. To-day claims con- 

 tinue to be made by powerful institutions around us of access to high- 

 er sources of knowledge than mere observation, hypothesis, and verifi- 

 cation. We are pointed to revelations of supernatural descent as the 

 only sources of light regarding man's relation to the all and the high- 

 est. Here the method of science departs from the old controversial 

 practice. The leaves of human history are turned, and from such of 

 them as may be deciphered we read how the supernatural came to be 

 believed in. And as the time and place of birth of that belief are 

 gradually restored to us, then, incidentally, the question of truth or 

 error is settled. To disprove an error is much, to explain how it came 

 to be deemed truth is more, to rightly appraise inheritances of mingled 

 truth and error is most of all. 



When our fathers in the long ago beheld lightning and tempest, were 

 awed by the starry heavens, felt the suggestions of the closing grave, 

 knew that good men were often miserable, and the wicked often pros- 

 perous, they interpreted the facts as they saw them. Their eyes may 

 have been dim, their reasoning capacity defective, yet their method, if 

 by stretch of courtesy we can call it such, was the scientific method in 

 the making. The claim of unalterableness, of infallibility, marks the 

 earliness of the age which proclaimed it. Men of old thought of truth 

 as of a thing they might grasp as fully and perfectly as a child's hand 

 holds a pebble. They had no conception of the infinity and complexity 

 of the universe as we see it, its every thread interlaced with every 

 other, so that we think of truth as of the shimmering face of a star, 



