492 CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 
When Kingsley delivered this message artisans were crowding in thousands 
to lectures in Manchester and other populous places by leaders in the scientific 
world of that time. Labour then welcomed science as its ally in the struggle 
for civil rights and spiritual liberty. That battle has been fought and won, 
and subjects in bitter dispute fifty years ago now repose in the limbo of 
forgotten things. There is no longer a conflict between religion and science, 
and labour can assert its claims in the market-place or council house with- 
out fear of repression. Science is likewise free to pursue its own researches 
and apply its own principles and methods within the realm of observable 
phenomena, and it does not desire to usurp the functions of faith in sacred 
dogmas to be perpetually retained and infallibly declared. The Royal Society 
of London was founded for the extension of natural knowledge in contra-dis- 
tinction to the supernatural, and it is content to leave priests and philosophers 
to describe the world beyond the domain of observation and experiment. 
When, however, phenomena belonging to the natural world are made subjects 
of supernatural revelation or uncritical inquiry, science has the right to present 
an attitude of suspicion towards them. Its only interest in mysteries is to 
discover the natural meaning of them. It does not need messages from the 
spirit world to acquire a few elementary facts relating to the stellar universe, 
and it must ask for resistless evidence before observations contrary to all 
natural law are accepted as scientific truth. If there are circumstances ia 
which matter may be divested of the property of mass, fairies may be photo- 
graphed, lucky charms may determine physical events, magnetic people disturb 
compass needles, and so on, by all means let them be investigated, but the 
burden of proof is upon those who believe in them and every witness will 
be challenged at the bar of scientific opinion. 
We do not want to go back to the days when absolute credulity was inculcated 
as a virtue and doubt punished as a crime. It is easy to find in works of 
uncritical observers of medieval times most circumstantial accounts of all kinds 
of astonishing manifestations, but we are not compelled to accept the records 
as scientifically accurate and to provide natural explanations of them. We 
need not doubt the sincerity of the observer even when we decline to accept 
his testimony as scientific truth. The maxim that ‘Seeing is believing’? may 
be sound enough doctrine for the majority of people, but it is insufficient as 
a principle of scientific inquiry. For thousands of years it led men to believe 
that the earth was the centre of the universe, with the sun and other celestial 
bodies circling round it, and controlling the destiny of man, yet what seemed 
obvious was shown by Copernicus to be untrue. This was the beginning of 
the liberation of human life and intellect from the maze of puerile description 
and philosophic conception. Careful observation and crucial experiment later 
took the place of personal assertion and showed that events in Nature are 
determined by permanent law and are not subject to haphazard changes by super- 
natural agencies. When this position was gained by’science, belief in astrology, 
necromancy, and sorcery of every kind began to decline, and men learned that 
they were masters of their own destinies. The late War is responsible 
for a recradescence of these mediwval superstitions, but if natural 
science is true to the principles by which it has advanced it will continue 
to bring to bear upon them the piercing light by which civilised man was 
freed from their baleful consequences. 
There is abundant need for the use of the intellectual enlightenment which 
science can supply to counteract the ever-present tendency of humanity to 
revert to primitive ideas. Fifty years of compulsory education are but a 
moment in the history of man’s development, and their influence is as nothing 
