AS TO THE liELATlONS OF SCIENCE AND EAITH. 219 



Mosaic cosmogony Avitli geology is sufficiently clear; but 

 every man who in the present state of our icnoAvledge ven- 

 tures to develop their harmonj in details is sure to fail. 



2. Neither reason nor Holy Scripture gives us any war- 

 ranty for restraining scientiHc researches or speculations ; 

 and any attempt to restrain them proves our ignorance of 

 the laws of investigation, and is a usurpation of the rights 

 of human thought. On looking into the past, we learn that 

 the most important discoveries were reached by men going 

 blind-fold, and often going against tlie current of popular 

 opinion. ]\Ien have used wrong methods, and arrived at 

 valuable results ; Columbus was Avrong in the notion that 

 westward was an easy route to the East Indies, but it was 

 better to take the wrong route than to remain at home. 

 Scientific inquirers claim the right to go wrong, to use 

 wrong methods, if these appear tlie best, and not to be 

 challenged as for a moral delinquency ; they also believe 

 that rehgious councils (or even scientific councils) are as 

 unfit to regulate their procedure as they are to instruct 

 army connnanders how to handle bodies of soldiery. Tlio 

 investigator may be astray in his views of nature, may be 

 biased in his mode of drawing inferences, may be ignorant 

 of the religious tendency of his opinions. But his erroneous 

 assumptions may be a necessary step in his progress ; and 

 we must let him follow out his own plans. JMany illustra- 

 tions bear on this. Sir Isaac Newton made his optical 

 discoveries by the help of an erroneous theory as to the 

 nature of light ; and Ave are almost certainly in the dark or 

 astray as to the nature of gravitation, yet much useful 

 investigation is in progress as to its subject-matter. All 

 scientific investigation is at first groping in darkness ; even 

 the student of mathematics must at the beginning of his 

 course deal with mmns quantities, and with their imaginary 

 square-roots, and must learn to add and to multiply infinities, 

 all which impossibilities prove to be both legitimate and useful. 



o. The right to investigate and to speculate carries with 

 it the right to pul)lisli the speculations at any stage, and 

 hoAvever crude. It is indeed to be remembered that if any 

 man comes to anti-moral or to atheistical conclusions, he 

 ought to hold himself responsible for the AdeAvs Avliich he 

 actually entertains, liOAveA^er he has come to accept them. 

 But a man Avho accepts particular a^cavs about science (or 

 about history or philosophy) is not to be held responsible for 

 deductions that somebody else can justly or mijustly draAv 



