252 
Scientific Arrogance. 
I May, 
true that science is full of paradoxes ; hence the continuous 
stream of new books, which are all in some degree at 
variance with “ received opinion,” and therefore more or 
less paradoxical. I flatter myself that the views I have 
enunciated in my book may be found to reconcile many 
interpretations of Nature hitherto considered antagonistic, 
and, in particular, I believe that I have done something 
towards reconciling the fundamental truths of religion and 
science. 
My critic represents me as declaring unconditionally that 
“ matter is constantly coming into existence and passing 
away.” It is true that, in answer to Prof. Haeckel, I say 
that “ Really experience — that is the knowledge communi- 
cated to our consciousness through the senses — is continually 
showing us matter in the process of coming into existence 
and passing away. That a natural body, when * it seems to 
disappear,’ does not actually disappear, is a pure theory. 
Abstract matter — that is matter devoid of every quality 
by which matter is known to us — never disappears, for the 
simple reason that it is an abstraction, and has no more 
sensible existence than any other metaphysical conception.” 
I believe that Mr. Herbert Spencer and Prof. Huxley would 
both support me in this conclusion. I am also reported as 
asserting that “ Sunbeams add many thousand tons annually 
to the Earth’s weight. Rain falls from the sky direCt, and 
is not, as meteorologists absurdly assert, a production of 
evaporation.” I do so say that the light of the sun has 
been an important faCtor in the formation of the coal- 
measures, and, with George Stephenson, I am disposed to 
describe coal as “ bottled-up ” sunshine. Rain certainly 
“ falls from the sky direCt,” whatever meteorologists may 
say as to the process by which it gets there. Chemists tell 
us that water is composed of two gases, and Laplace taught 
that the solar system was formed out of a gaseous fluid 
which occupied interstellar space. 
The religionist says that science is a paradox ; the scientist 
says that religion is a paradox. Which is right ? I do not 
believe that either is literally accurate, but I do say that 
they are fundamentally reconcilable. The biologist and the 
geologist both say that life on the Earth has undergone a 
progressive development, and the latter concludes that such 
could only arise from a corresponding improvement in the 
condition of the Earth itself ; but my critic, who is pro- 
foundly acquainted with the nature of heat, paradoxically 
assumes that the Earth is growing colder, and that man 
and all living things are destined to be frozen out of existence 
