220 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



Belfast, T thought it not only my right, but my duty, to 

 state that, as regards the organic world, we must enjoy 

 the freedom which we have already won in regard to the 

 inorganic. I could not discern the shred of a title-deed 

 which gave any man, or any class of men, the right to 

 open the door of one of these worlds to the scientific 

 searcher and to close the other against him. And I con- 

 sidered it frankest, wisest, and in the long run most 

 conducive to permanent peace, to indicate, without eva- 

 sion or reserve, the ground that belongs to Science, and 

 to which she will assuredly make good her claim. 



I have been reminded that an eminent predecessor of 

 mine in the Presidential chair expressed a totally different 

 view of the Cause of things from that enunciated by me. 

 In doing so he transgressed the bounds of science at least 

 as much as I did; but nobody raised an outcry against 

 him. The freedom he took I claim. And looking at 

 what I must regard as the extravagances of the religious 

 world; at the very inadequate and foolish notions con- 

 cerning this universe which are entertained by the major- 

 ity of our authorized religious teachers; at the waste of 

 energy on the part of good men over things unworthy, if 

 I may say it without discourtesy, of the attention of en- 

 lightened heathens; the fight about the fripperies of Kit- 

 ualism, and the verbal quibbles of the Athanasian Creed; 

 the forcing on the public view of Pontigny Pilgrimages; 

 the dating of historic epochs from the definition of the 

 Immaculate Conception; the proclamation of the Divine 

 Glories of the Sacred Heart — standing in the midst of 

 these chimeras, which astound all thinking men, it did 

 not appear to me extravagant to claim the public toler- 

 ance for an hour and a haK, for the statement of more 



