266 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 504. 



raw material of experience, should be cred- 

 ited with a larger measure of success in its 

 provision of the physiological arrangements 

 which condition reason in its endeavors to 

 turn experience to account. 



Considerations like these, unless I haVe 

 compressed them beyond the limits of in- 

 telligibility, do undoubtedly suggest a cer- 

 tain inevitable incoherence in any general 

 scheme of thought which is built out of 

 materials provided by natural science alone. 

 Extend the boundaries of knowledge as you 

 may ; draw how you will the picture of the 

 universe ; reduce its infinite variety to the 

 modes of a single space-filling ether; re- 

 trace its history to the birth of existing 

 atoms; show how under the pressure of 

 gravitation they became concentrated into 

 nebulae, into suns, and all the host of 

 heaven; how, at least in one small planet, 

 they combined to form organic compounds ; 

 how organic compounds became living 

 things ; how living things, developing along 

 many different lines, gave birth at last to 

 one superior race ; how from this race arose, 

 after many ages, a learned handful, who 

 looked round on the world which thus 

 blindly brought them into being, and 

 judged it, and knew it for what it was— 

 perform, I say, all this, and, though you 

 may indeed have attained to science, in 

 nowise will you have attained to a self- 

 sufficing system of beliefs. One thing at 

 least will remain, of which this long-drawn 

 sequence of causes and effects gives no 

 satisfying explanation ; and that is knowl- 

 edge itself. Natural science must ever re- 

 gard knowledge as the product of irrational 

 conditions, for in the last resort it knows 

 no others. It must always regard knowl- 

 edge as rational, or else science itself dis- 

 appears. In addition, therefore, to the 

 difficulty of extracting from experience be- 

 liefs which experience contradicts, we are 

 confronted with the difficulty of harmoniz- 

 ing the pedigree of our beliefs with their 



title to authority. The more successful we 

 are in explaining their origin, the more 

 doubt we cast on their validity. The more 

 imposing seems the scheme of what we 

 know, the more difficult it is to discover 

 by what ultimate criteria we claim to know 

 it. 



Here, however, we touch the frontier be- 

 yond which physical science possesses no 

 jurisdiction. If the obscure and difficult 

 region which lies beyond is to be surveyed 

 and made accessible, philosophy, not sci- 

 ence, must undertake the task. It is no 

 business of this society. We meet here to 

 promote the cause of knowledge in one of 

 its great divisions; we shall not help it 

 by confusing the limits which usefully sep- 

 arate one division from another. It may 

 perhaps be thought that I have disregarded 

 my own precept— that I have wilfully over- 

 stepped the ample bounds within which the 

 searchers into nature carry on their labors. 

 If it be so, I can only beg your forgiveness. 

 My first desire has been to rouse in those 

 who, like myself, are no specialists in phys- 

 ics, the same absorbing interest which I feel 

 in what is surely the most far-reaching 

 speculation about the physical universe 

 which has ever claimed experimental sup- 

 port ; and if in so doing I have been tempt- 

 ed to hint my own personal opinion that 

 as natural science grows it leans more, not 

 less, upon an idealistic interpretation of the 

 universe, even those who least agree may 

 perhaps be prepared to pardon. 



A. J. Balfour. 



SCIENCE AND THE PEOPLE.* 

 Opportunities beget responsibilities. On 

 such an occasion as this, he who has been 

 honored with the opportunity is tempted to 

 address you upon a specialized subject to 

 which he has given years of thought and 



* Retiring address of the president of the North 

 Carolina Academy of Science, Wake Forest Col- 

 lege, May 13, 1904. 



