STATE EXPERIMENT STATION 195 



He encouraged, but he criticised. He asked questions, sug- 

 gested doubts, raised objections. His students were required 

 not only to collect facts, or supposed facts, and to connect and 

 complement them by comparison, analogies, and theories, but 

 they were made to attack their theories in every weak point, 

 and to verify or disprove the supposed facts by repeated 

 scrutiny from every side. 



The science of our time is advancing rapidly because it is 

 moving cautiously, and therefore surely, and I dwell upon 

 this feature of scientific investigation because the facts to 

 which I have alluded, — the facts relating to the kinds of 

 matter required by plants as their food, — are of a positive and 

 firmly established sort, fully deserving our credence and fit 

 to be the basis of our intelligent practice. There are various 

 kinds of evidence. In the schools of theology and medicine, 

 in law, and in politics, there are numbers of doctrines, and 

 numbers of statements which many people believe to be true 

 and many others believe to be false. This diversity of belief 

 arises to some degree from the nature of the evidence, which 

 is often of a kind that cannot be conclusive. I may believe 

 in the immortality of the soul ; you may not. We can discuss 

 this question all our days without coming to a satisfactory 

 demonstration. Our belief, whichever way it runs, is a matter 

 of feeling as much as of logic. The arguments which convince 

 me are trifles to you ; those which settle your conviction have 

 no point to me. But in many things we can come nearer to 

 the fact. If I assert that when a stick of wood burns, oxygen 

 of the air combines chemically with carbon and hydrogen of 

 the wood, and that carbonic acid gas and vapor of water are 

 products of the chemical change, I expect to be implicitly and 

 fully believed, because the evidence of those statements is of 

 such a sort that any fair intellect can comprehend it, and 

 evidence of a contrary sort there is none. 



Before the close of this meeting at Meriden, a com- 

 mittee, appointed to report to the Board concerning 



