Physical Sciences. 



235 



may be enjoyed by coming generations for social, mental and moral 

 improvement. 



As a product of mind, that gives solid returns in money and goods, 

 science becomes a stimulus to mind that reaches to the masses. With 

 such means of intercourse that the same problems are subjects of 

 thought at the same time in all parts of the world, and with such 

 wonderful instruments for physical research as are already invented, 

 we may well boast of science as a promoter of civilization, as a broad 

 basis upon which it may now rest to build higher courses upon which 

 to advance. It is not strange that these results charm men. They 

 are worthy of admiration. It is not strange that an instrument so 

 powerful should be exalted above its maker — that science should 

 become to some a divinity with power of self-revelation — the giver of 

 every blessing — that grand guide and prophet of future good on which 

 the hope of the race should center. Men look to physical science not 

 only as an agency destined to become more powerful as an advancer of 

 civilization, but as suflBcient of itself to bring to man all the good he 

 can enjoy. To this view we object, and utter our earnest protest 

 against it in the interest of science itself no less than in that of race. 

 We claim that the advance in science has come from knowledge of 

 method, and that knowledge of the true method of investigation came 

 from the study of man, his powers and their proper use. We claim 

 that there is nothing in natural science that is self-directive even in 

 securing physical good; that it is a mere machine which must be 

 brought into action by the same cunning workman that prepared and 

 organized its parts; that it has no power to secure justice or purity or 

 truth, except as it appeals to the higher tribunal in man, a tribunal 

 which science never organized and for which it can never become the 

 substitute. That tribunal, the Moral Reasox, is in man like the 

 pilot to the ship, while physical science is the moving power which 

 fills the sails or turns the ponderous wheels — a force like the wind 

 bringing destructive tornadoes that will founder the ship without the 

 pilot's skill to avert its force, or like the steam that shatters and destroys 

 except when controlled by valves and pistons as the engineer directs. 



We wonder at science, indeed, but we wonder at it most of all as a 

 product of human thought. It is indeed a revelation of the thought 

 and plan of the Creator in the physical universe, but the revelation 

 was meaningless as science, till the human mind, the image of God, 

 put letter and line in place and proclaimed the mysteries of matter 

 and force in common language for the instruction of the thousands 

 unable to read the mystic signs in earth and sky for themselves. As 

 an invention — a discovery, an instrument, an agency — science prom- 

 ises to iiccomplish all its admirers can claim in giving power and the 



