20 IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



service to the state, in the fact that it is a perpetual protest 

 against false science, science falsely so-called, insanity and 

 nonsense of every description, into v^rhich civilized people are 

 apparently so easily and constantly led astray. I think that I 

 speak with the approval of most students when I say that the 

 common people stand to-day more in need of our methods than 

 of our facts. The habit of trusting only to accurate and oft 

 repeated observation, the habit of correlating fact with fact, the 

 habit of appealing constantly to some independent check, or 

 verification, of accepting nothing that does not pass the ordeal 

 of such scrutiny and test, such habit, if it could be imparted to 

 our people now, and once for all, would certainly be of more 

 value to them by far than all the facts we are likely to set 

 before them for many a decade. The credulity, the absolutely 

 infantile credulity, of some of our most intelligent people 

 surpasses belief. The fact that "truth lies at the bottom of 

 a well," that its attainment is difficult in the extreme, never 

 occurs to most men, apparently, at all The song of the veriest 

 charlatan meets readier credence than the voice of the labor- 

 ious student. Accordingly one craze, or form of infatuation 

 after another, sweeps over enlightened humanity. Forty 

 years ago it was spiritism or spiritualism; to-day it is Christian 

 Science. I leave the Christian apologist to disown the first 

 portion of the binomial or not, as it may seem to him good; but 

 I for one protest against the use of the word science in any 

 such connection. Surely science has been long enough in the 

 world to stand for something real in court, to possess a charac- 

 ter and a reputation that has standing; surely science is 

 entitled, once for all, to be relieved from the imputations 

 of modern superstition and self delusion. The one thing for 

 which the man of science strives is the ascertainment of facts, 

 as these are appreciable by the senses aided by all instruments 

 of precision; the one thing that so-called Christian Science 

 denies, and all the while refuses, is what the senses of man 

 declare to be a fact. There can by no possibility be science 

 here where truth is studiously excluded and yet thousands of 

 Americans, possibly hundreds of lowans, are to-day inclined to 

 spend their money and their time in pursuit of this latest 

 delusion in the mirage book of time. 



Of course I shall not be accused of refusing to my suffering 

 fellow-man any form of solace which humanity, individually or 

 collectively, may possibly bring to aid him; but let us have no 



