APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 225 



students of the University; setting forth the extraordinary 

 fact that the ]ectui*e-list for the faculty of Science, pub- 

 lished a month before they wrote, did not contain the 

 name of a single Professor of the Physical or Natural 

 Sciences. 



The memorialists forcibly deprecate this, and dwell 

 upon the necessity of education in science: "The distin- 

 guishing mark of this age is its ardor for science. The 

 natural sciences have, within the last fifty years, become 

 the chief est study in the world ; they are in our time pur- 

 sued with an activity unparalleled in the history of man- 

 kind. Scarce a year now passes without some discovery 

 being made in these sciences which, as with the touch of 

 the magician's wand, shivers to atoms theories formerly 

 deemed unassailable. It is through the physical and nat- 

 ural sciences that the fiercest assaults are now made on 

 our religion. No more deadly weapon is used against our 

 faith than the facts incontestably proved by modern re- 

 searches in science." 



Such statements must be the reverse of comfortable to 

 a number of gentlemen who, trained in the philosophy 

 of Thomas Aquinas, have been accustomed to the unques- 

 tioning 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 dangers which the creation of 

 a school of science in the University would defend them 

 from. For our generation of Irish Catholics are writhing 

 under the sense of their inferiority in science, and are de- 

 termined that such inferiority shall not long continue ; and 



