LIGHT, LUMINARIES AND LIFE. 179 
advance the cause of ¢ruth; and he ought to recollect, that each 
new attempt in that direction should be judged on its own 
merits, and not looked at through the haze which may have 
been created by earlier attempts ‘made in a less advanced state 
of our knowledge. On several occasions I have felt it necessary, 
before this Institute and in the columns of the Guardian, to 
point out the fallacy of assigning to the utterances of even the 
highest authorities in science a finality, which they would be 
the last to claim for what seems to them the resultant outcome 
of the latest scientific advance. It was therefore satisfactory to 
find this contention of mine strongly supported two years ago 
by a member of the staff of Greenwich Observatory, who writes 
EO Me --— 
“T was very glad that you laid emphasis at the Meeting on 
Wednesday* on the fact that there is no Jinality in Science. I fens 
that that fact must always be kept in view as of first importance, 
when we are discussing the relation between Revelation and 
Science.” T 
IT have been taken to task in several quarters for suggesting 
that the ancients, and in particular the writer of the Genesis 
Narrative, may have been possessed of more knowledge of 
nature by direct observation than we generally accredit them 
with. I dealt with that point as it turned up in controversy ;} 
and it may suffice to remark here that the more one learns of 
the indications of such knowledge as possessed by prehistoric 
men, and of the ancient science of the Chinese .§ the more value 
one is compelled to attach to such references as are made in the 
prehistoric chapters (i to xi) of the Book of Genesis,|| to such 
knowledge of practical application of nature to the wants of 
man, as was possessed by the men of at leas tthe Bronze and 
the Iron Ages, if not even by the Neolithic men. It is from 
people who touch science from the outside that such criticisms 
* The Annual Meeting of the Victoria Institute. 
+t Letter to the present writer, dated Aug. 21st, 1908, by Mr. E. W. 
Maunder. 
t Guardian, Nov. 20th, 1907. 
§ See Yu Tung Kwai, on the “ Ancient Knowledge of Chemistry,” 
in the Times, June 3rd, 1909, and the Standard of June 2nd. 
|| £.9., the building of cities and the use of bronze (? copper) and 
iron by the impure race of Cain’s descendants. 
Sir Robert S. Ball, F.R.S., the Cambridge astronomer, remarks ; “The 
discovery of Mercury w was a brilliant achievement of prehistoric times. 
The early astronomer who accomplished that feat . . . merits our 
hearty admiration for his untutored acuteness and penetration” (Story of 
the Heavens, p. 290). 
