SYNTHESIS OF THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL 



They are not now two camps : the}^ are one. In the past, 

 it is true, the feud between these two provinces of 

 knowledge was bitter, Supernaturalism, in generations 

 gone by, has been far from friendly to students of nature. 

 There is, I believe, a suggestion of this bygone distrust in 

 an unwritten rule of this Association. It is in the form of 

 an understanding that supernatural questions should be 

 excluded from our discussions. Such an understanding 

 suggests a time when the supernatualist was felt to be a 

 disturber in a gathering of students of nature. And as a 

 matter of fact he was. He stood aloof from the student of 

 nature, looked upon him not only as an enemy of God, but 

 of society, and took the stern measures of those days to 

 suppress him. Let one instance suffice to bring home to 

 us the uncompromising character of the enmity. On the 

 seventeenth of February, 408 years ago, Giordano Bruno, 

 an enthusiast in science, was burnt alive on the Campo di 

 Fiora, in Rome, because of his discoveries in science ; the 

 " head and front of his offending " being his belief in what 

 was called, bj?- his accuser, the abominable and absurd 

 doctrine of innumerable worlds and the rotatory motion of 

 our planet. And this was no exceptional instance of the 

 means taken to prevent the scientist from prying too 

 closely into the secrets of nature. Let us not, however, 

 be unjust to the.se old time representatives of the super- 

 natural. They were men of their day. They had a zeal 

 for God, " but not according to knowledge," and some of 

 them, at least, carried through these terrible deeds against 

 their own instincts of human sympathy, in obedience to 

 their consciences. Let us be thankful that we live under 

 happier skies. There is a more enlightened conscience in 

 Italy to-day. There, on the same Canipo, eight years ago, 

 on the anniversary of Bruno's martyrdom, a monument 

 was erected to his honor on the very spot where he paid 

 the price of enthusiasm for the truth of nature. And thus 

 once more, ** wisdom is justified of her children." And this 



