22 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 340. 



science and the unrest, the bravado that is 

 so ill- disguised, of what some call Mife.' 

 Science knows that it does not know, that 

 it can not know, that even conscious man 

 has always moving within him another re- 

 lation to his world than that of knowledge ; 

 and life, as apart from knowledge, shows 

 that it does not live. So again I say that 

 the real danger of positivism, of a blind or 

 forgetful positivism, is that the naturalistic 

 or scientific point of view and the voli- 

 tional point of view will not interfere with 

 each other. Certainly within the laboratory 

 and the study to keep them apart, to sepa- 

 rate theoi^y and experiment, would be fatal 

 to both ; the life that we call science needs 

 their constant interference, and with every 

 one of its experiments shows that they are 

 not as incongruous as they seem ; but what 

 is the world, if not a great laboratory that 

 is related to the smaller as real life to the 

 theater, as nature to the conservatory, as 

 an unaided vision to the microscope ? 



Agnosticism is another name for positiv- 

 ism. The positivist, the devotee of pure, 

 objective, special science, cannot but believe 

 in an unknowable, and this belief, in its 

 turn often forgotten, needs always to be 

 recognized as a part, a very important part, 

 of the scientific consciousness, for it is only 

 one other way in which thought conserves 

 its universe. Thus the unknowable, whether 

 seen as compensating for science's aloofness 

 from life or for the dreaming that special- 

 ism induces, is a constant safeguard against 

 the abuse of knowledge. 



The unknowable is a negative that bears 

 constant witness, not to another sphere 

 which some mind quite different from our 

 own might consciously comprehend, and 

 which we, being intellectually outside, and 

 so only creatures of faith, can merely 

 blindly will, but to another relation than 

 that of mere knowledge, which we as hnoiv- 

 ing creatures have to reality. There is, in 

 short, an unknowable for the single reason 



that to know is also to will. Or, again, the 

 unknowable is not for knowledge, but for 

 action. 



Let us be blindly scientific, insisting on 

 science being onlj^ for science's sake, recog- 

 nizing nothing as worth while but great 

 learning about a Greek particle or a minute 

 insect or a mysterious element, and like a 

 dark cloud there arises and spreads over 

 our view the unknowable, and from this 

 cloud a voice comes : '' Only the All is and 

 the All is One and the One is not for knowl- 

 edge. " But as we apply our science, break- 

 ing through the walls of specialism, and 

 liberating the will that was for the time 

 their not unwilling prisoner, the sky clears. 

 The one is not for knowledge, but for life ; 

 knowledge is not for knowledge, but for will, 

 its natural fulfillment. " The end of man is 

 action, not thought, though it were the 

 noblest." 



Alfred H. Lloyd. 



TRUMAN EENBY S AFFORD. 



A long, active, busy life, devoted with- 

 out reserve to teaching, to research, to cares 

 of family — such a life of science as that 

 which closed on June 12, in Newark, 

 cannot receive adequate appreciation in 

 the brief space available here. But the 

 friendship of years crowding one upon an- 

 other will not let pass in silence the death 

 of Truman Henry Safford. A few words 

 of personal sorrow demand immediate ex- 

 pression ; leaving a more complete sum- 

 mary of his life's tribute to astronomy to 

 await dignified publication in the annals 

 of those learned societies of which he was 

 a distinguished member. 



The friendship of years is no light thing. 

 It was in the latter part of 1884 that Saf- 

 ford paid his first visit to the modest ob- 

 servatory of Columbia College, then situ- 

 ated in 49th Street, N. Y, He found there 

 a stripling engaged in testing a level. The 



