4 6 



LECTURES AND ESS A YS 



close the other against him. And I con- 

 sidered it frankest, wisest, and in the 

 long run most conducive to permanent 

 peace, to indicate, without evasion or 

 reserve, the ground that belongs to 

 Science, and to which she will assuredly 

 make good her claim. 



I have been reminded that an eminent 

 predecessor of mine in the Presidential 

 chair expressed a totally different view of 

 the Cause of things from that enunciated 

 by me. In doing so he transgressed the 

 bounds of science at least as much as I 

 did ; but nobody raised an outcry against 

 him. The freedom he took I claim. 

 And looking at what I must regard as 

 the extravagances of the religious world ; 

 at the very inadequate and foolish notions 

 concerning this universe which are enter- 

 tained by the majority of our authorised 

 religious teachers ; at the waste of energy 

 on the part of good men over things 

 unworthy, if I may say it without dis- 

 courtesy, of the attention of enlightened 

 heathens ; the fight about the fripperies 

 rjf Ritualism, and the verbal quibbles of 

 the Athanasian Creed ; the forcing on the 

 public view of Pontigny Pilgrimages ; the 

 dating of historic epochs from the defini- 

 tion of the Immaculate Conception ; the 

 proclamation of the Divine Glories of the 

 Sacred Heart standing in the midst of 

 these chimeras, which astound all think- 

 ing men, it did not appear to me extra- 

 vagant to claim the public tolerance for 

 .an hour and a half, for the statement of 

 more reasonable views, views more in 

 accordance with the verities which science 

 has brought to light, and which many 

 weary souls would, I thought, welcome 

 with gratification and relief. 



But to come to closer quarters. The 

 expression to which the most violent ex- 

 ception has been taken is this : " Aban- 

 doning all disguise, the confession I feel 

 bound to make before you is that I pro- 

 long the vision backward across the 

 boundary of the experimental evidence, 

 and discern in that Matter which we, in 

 our ignorance, and notwithstanding our 

 professed reverence for its Creator, have 

 hitherto covered with opprobrium, the 



promise and potency of every form and 

 quality of life." To call it a " chorus of 

 dissent," as my Catholic critic does, is a 

 mild way of describing the storm of 

 opprobrium with which this statement 

 has been assailed. But the first blast of 

 passion being past, I hope I may again 

 ask my opponents to consent to reason. 

 First of all, I am blamed for crossing the 

 boundary of the experimental evidence. 

 This, I reply, is the habitual action of 

 the scientific mind at least of that por- 

 tion of it which applies itself to physical 

 investigation. Our theories of light, heat, 

 magnetism, and electricity, all imply the 

 crossing of this boundary. My paper on 

 the " Scientific Use of the Imagination," 

 and my " Lectures on Light," illustrate 

 this point in the amplest manner ; and in 

 the article entitled " Matter and Force " I 

 have sought, incidentally, to make clear 

 that in physics the experiential incessantly 

 leads to the ultra-experiential ; that out 

 of experience there always grows some- 

 thing finer than mere experience, and 

 that in their different powers of ideal 

 extension consists, for the most part, the 

 difference between the great and the 

 mediocre investigator. The kingdom of 

 science, then, cometh not by observation 

 and experiment alone, but is completed 

 by fixing the roots of observation and 

 experiment in a region inaccessible to 

 both, and in dealing with which we are 

 forced to fall back upon the picturing 

 power of the mind. 



Passing the boundary of experience, 

 therefore, does not, in the abstract, con- 

 stitute a sufficient ground for censure. 

 There must have been something in my 

 particular mode of crossing it which pro- 

 voked this tremendous "chorus of dis- 

 sent." 



Let us calmly reason the point out. 

 I hold the nebular theory as it was held 

 by Kant, Laplace, and William Herschel, 

 and as it is held by the best scientific 

 intellects of to-day. According to it, our 

 sun and planets were once diffused 

 through space as an impalpable haze, out 

 of which, by condensation, came the 

 solar system. What caused the haze to 



