16 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 



combined with fundamental skepticism,"* intra- 

 scientific skepticism be it understood, skepticism 

 as to what science can really insist upon, rather 

 than skepticism of things outside science. 



It is perhaps not wonderful that with the great 

 burst of scientific knowledge which marked the 

 second half of the nineteenth century, there should 

 arise the idea that science could and would prove 

 the key to all mysteries. When one passes even a 

 few of them under review, the achievements of 

 science are marvellous beyond all description. 

 Look at the immensities of the universe. It takes 

 light one second to travel one hundred and 

 eighty-six thousand miles, and the distance be- 

 tween the sun and the earth being more than 

 ninety-two million eight hundred thousand 

 miles, every sunbeam has spent eight minutes or 

 thereabouts on its journey. It would take an ex- 

 press train, travelling sixty miles an hour and 

 never stopping day or night for coal or water, one 

 hundred and seventy-five years to make that jour- 

 ney. Yet it is a mere trifle to the distances known to 

 exist amongst the stars. Everybody knows the 

 Pole Star by sight. Let any person look at it on his 

 fortieth birthday. The beam which meets his eye, 

 left that star at about the moment the forty year 

 old spectator was first making his entry into this 

 vale of tears. Yet even this again is a trifle if the 

 calculations of astronomers are correct, who tell 

 us that the extreme limit of the stellar system 

 consists of a star whose light takes thirty thousand 

 years to reach us, travelling, though it does, at 



* Lodge, Continuity, p. 7. 



