200 Transactions of the American Institute. 



struggle for the liberty of science; a struggle whieli has been going 

 on for so many centuries. A tough contest this has been ! A war 

 continued longer, with battles fiercer, with sieges more persistent, 

 with strategy more vigorous than in any of the comparatively pettj 

 warfares of Alexander, or Caesar, or Napoleon. I shall ask you to 

 ^0 with me through some of these most determined sieges, and over 

 gome of the hardest fought battle-fields of this great war. We will 

 look well at the combatants ; we will listen to the battle c7-ies ; we 

 will note the strategy of leaders, the cut and thrust of champions, 

 the weight of missiles, the temper of weapons. 



My subject, then, shall be "The Warfare of Science." 

 My thesis, which, by a historical study of this warfare I expect to 

 develop, is the following: In all modern history, interference with 

 science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscien- 

 tious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst 

 evils both to religion and science, and invariably. And, on the 

 other hand, all untrammeled scientific investigation, no matter how 

 dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seep"ed tempora- 

 rily to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good of religion 

 and science. I say invariably / I mean exactly that. It is a rule 

 to which history shows not one exception. It would seem, logically, 

 that this statement could not be gainsayed. God's truth must agree, 

 whether discovered by looking within upon the soul, or without 

 upon the world. A truth written upon the human heart to-day, in 

 its full play of emotions or passions, cannot be at any real variance 

 even Avith a truth written upon a fossil whose poor life was gone 

 millions of years ago. And this being so, it would also seem a truth 

 irrefragable that the search for each of these kinds of truth must be 

 followed out in its own lines by its own methods, to its own results, 

 without any interference from investigators along other lines by 

 other methods; and it would also seem, logically, that we might 

 work on in absolute confidence that whatever, at any moment, 

 might seem to be the relative positions of the two different bands of 

 woi"kers, they must at last come together, for truth is one. But 

 logic is not history. History is full of interferences which have cost 

 the earth dear. Strangest of all, some of the most direful of them 

 have been made by the best of men, actuated by the purest motives, 

 seeking the noblest results. These interferences and the struggle 

 against them make up the warfare of science. One statement more, 

 to clear the ground. You will not understand me at all to say that 



