68 A. T. SCHOFIELD^ M.D._, ON SCIENCE AND THE UNSEEN WORLD. 



NOTE ON DR. SCHOFIELD'S PAPER ON "SCIENCE 

 AND THE UNSEEN WORLD." 



Communicated by the Rev. A. Irving, D.Sc, F.G.S. 



The paper by Dr. Schofield is interesting and valuable to the 

 great majority of us, who are debarred from the same extensive 

 observation of psychological phenomena as falls in his way as a 

 professional man. The first part of the paper leaves upon one's 

 mind the impression that in his use of the term "Science" its con- 

 notation is mainly restricted to the science of the human microcosm, 

 almost oblivious of the vastly wider co.wios to which science in the 

 larger sense extends its investigations. It is surely within the 

 range of human consciousness that we find the borderland, where 

 things which are matters of revelation and things which are 

 matters of scientific investigation — " the things which are unseen 

 and eternal " and " the things which are seen and temporal " (to use 

 the Pauline dictum) not only meet but coalesce. I cannot therefore 

 follow the learned author when he says that " their spheres scarcely 

 ever touch." A truer philosophy surely teaches that they both 

 centre in God, and are not therefore in the last resort diverse. 

 Again when we are told that science may " postulate " an omniscient 

 mind we are on a different line to that of Lord Kelvin's dictum 

 (which I heard him utter), which affirms that science can (and, if 

 thoroughgoing enough, must) infer the existence of God. It is the 

 function of philosophy to unify the two spheres of thought and 

 belief ; and their differences arise not only from " the character and 

 object of the two " (p. 49), but also from the difference of the 

 faculties called into play. The fundamental difference is that the 

 one field of thought requires the purely intellectual faculties ; the 

 other appeals to the intuitive and perceptive faculties, to all that 

 constitutes spirit (volition, emotion, etc.) and requires the "venture 

 of faith," which may and does challenge the test of experience in its 

 results, even as scientific theory does in another way. There are 

 some excellent remarks on this point in Thoughts on Itelir/ion by 

 George Romanes, no mean scientist ; and it is urged in the New 

 Testament jxissiin. 



In the second part of the paper Dr. Schofield seems to me (as a 

 layman) to present us with a pretty complete outline map of the 

 ground which the modern science of psychology in its present 

 inchoate stage is attempting to explore. There occur, however, in 

 it several expressions which seem to carry to the mind of a student 



