156 MATTER, ENERGY, CONSCIOUSNESS, SPIRIT 



were true, that hypothesis is regarded as the truth, 

 until something occurs which proves it to be in error. 

 There is sometimes loose talk even among scientific 

 men attempting to generalise concerning other sub- 

 jects than those in which they have won their 

 position that the scientific hypotheses of one age 

 become the laughing stock of the next, but such 

 talkers are often the laughing stock of their own age 

 to those best qualified to form an opinion. As a 

 matter of fact, there is a steady and increasingly 

 rapid advance being made into the foundations of 

 knowledge, which is impressive in no way more than 

 in the continuous evidence it affords that these 

 foundations have been well and truly laid. 



The methods of science in winning knowledge are 

 of course its own. No one desires to suppose that 

 they are the only methods by which Truth is to be 

 sought or found. But when it comes to the modes 

 of imparting knowledge already won, to educating 

 the growing citizen to a knowledge of himself and 

 his environment, we find differences as great. 



In matters of science we do not start a child upon 

 fundamentals. We do not say that in all the varied 

 happenings of the universe the sum of half the 

 product of the mass into the square of the velocity 

 and of the product of the distance into the force 

 remains constant. We do not start with the concep- 

 tion of energy and from it deduce mechanical, 

 thermal, electrical and chemical phenomena. The 

 conception of energy belongs to the generalised 

 philosophy of physical science and is the end result 

 of generations of scientific thinkers. But the priests, 

 of sections at least of the Christian religion, get hold 

 of the child and confront it with all the end products 

 of the philosophy of the childhood of the world, God 

 and the soul, heaven and hell, angels, spirits, and the 

 mysteries of the Trinity, almost before it can walk. 



