APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 221 



reasonable views — views more in accordance with tlie veri- 

 ties wMcli science lias brought to light, and which many 

 weary souls would, I thought, welcome with gratification 

 and relief. 



But to come to closer quarters. The expression to 

 which the most violent exception has been taken is this: 

 *' Abandoning all disguise, the confession I feel bound to 

 make before you is, that I prolong the vision backward 

 across the boundary of the experimental evidence, and 

 discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance, and 

 notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, 

 have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and 

 potency of every form and quality of life.'* To call it a 

 *' chorus of dissent," as my Catholic critic does, is a mild 

 way of describing the storm of opprobrium with which this 

 statement has been assailed. But the first blast of passion 

 being past, I hope I may again ask my opponents to con- 

 sent to reason. First of all, I am blamed for crossing the 

 boundary of the experimental evidence. This, I reply, 

 is the habitual action of the scientific mind — at least of 

 that portion of it which applies itself to physical investi- 

 gation. Our theories of light, heat, magnetism, and elec- 

 tricity, all imply the crossing of this boundary. My paper 

 on the "Scientific Use of the Imagination,'* and my "Lect- 

 ures on Light," illustrate this point in the amplest man- 

 ner; and in the Article entitled "Matter and Force" in 

 the present volume I have sought, incidentally, to make 

 clear, that in physics the experiential incessantly leads to 

 the ultra-experiential; that out of experience there always 

 grows something finer than mere experience, and that in 

 their different powers of ideal extension consists, for the 

 most part, the difference between the great and the medi- 



