336 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 
science useful only where belief is indifferent to the 
subject-matter? If belief is subordinate to the tests of 
science, to be accepted or rejected in the degree of its 
accord with human experience, then it is simply an 
annex to science, a footnote to human experience, and 
the authority of the latter is supreme. If, however, 
truth comes to us from sources outside of human ex- 
perience it must come in some pure form, free from 
human errors. As such it must claim the first place. 
In this event the progress of science will be always on 
a lower plane than the progress of belief. 
In a recent address before the British Association for 
the Advancement of Science, the Marquis of Salisbury 
made in brief this contention: The cen- 
Views! Gt tie tral thought of modern science is evolu- 
sree tion, the change from the simple to the 
complex. This implies, in his judg- 
ment, not only the fundamental unity of all life, but the 
fundamental unity of all matter, and perhaps of all 
force as well. In spite of the claims of scientific men 
even the fact of organic evolution is far from demon- 
strated; while of inorganic evolution, the development 
of the chemical elements, science can tell us nothing. 
Wherefore the marquis, in view of the failure of science 
to keep up with the progress of belief, grows jocose 
and patronizing. His advice to his scientific associates 
might be stated in the words of Thackeray, that “we 
should think small beer of ourselves and pass around 
the bottle.” 
More recently another British statesman, Mr. Arthur 
J. Balfour, has discussed the Foundations of Belief. He 
contends that the methods of science can 
not give us absolute truth. Its methods 
are “of the earth, earthy.” Its claim 
of trust in the infallibility of its own processes has no 
Views of Arthur 
J. Balfour, 
