IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 28 



May I venture to suggest that the right honorable author, 

 not being expert in the simple phases of scientific effort, has 

 misconceived the mission and meaning of science altogether. 

 He says of science, "Foundations of Belief, " p. 94: "Its busi- 

 ness is to provide us with a theory of nature." Never in the 

 world! Its business is to depict nature as we find her and to 

 give such account as may be possible of agencies which effect 

 her changes. Science offers no explanation of nature. The 

 man of science may frame hypotheses, but they are only as 

 instruments of research for his own convenience, to be used 

 and cast away when their purpose is attained, or when better 

 are at hand. The facts attained by science, the methods of 

 discovering truth would remain precisely what they are, 

 whether our theory of nature be that of the eternity of a self- 

 created universe, whether that of the old-time theologian who 

 literally interpreted his six creative days, or whether with the 

 Christian child we reverently say, "In the beginning God 

 created the heaven and the earth." With the "meaning of 

 the world," as philosophers put it, science has nothing what- 

 ever to do; she would simply teach man such use of the world 

 as is conducive to his own safety and well-being, such a way of 

 looking at the world as will deliver him from fear. Surely to 

 the "meaning of the world" to "theories of nature" the race 

 has given sufficient attention; is it not high time we should 

 strive to comprehend that part of the world which most 

 directly concerns us, and which has all the while lain unnoted 

 within our reach? But even here Mr. Balfour would discredit 

 science. Basing an argument on what he terms "mental 

 physiology" he impugns the evidence of the senses; he 

 declares that science has no evidence of the existence of the 

 world of which it tells, is based upon an illusion, exists 

 because of an erroneous view of the natural world. The plain, 

 every-day man of science can for once scarcely trust his eyes 

 as he reads such pages. 



Now, to any one with sufficient mental equipoise to abide by 

 the earth, to stick to that which the whole experience of ani- 

 mate creation in all past ages has proven true, to any one who 

 abides the common appreciation of fact, such a book, as far as 

 the methods of science is concerned, appears simply as a jeu 

 d' esprit, a bit of dialectic humor; but to multitudes of people 

 who will not do this thing, who, on account of innate prejudice, 



