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are not at once to reject either in favour of the other, but 
calmly to weigh the whole of the evidence. It is one thing 
to accept a revelation, another, and a very different thing, to 
determine how much is involved in it. With respect to the 
latter, human fallibility steps in, and we are not, therefore, to 
set it down as irreligious to follow out the conclusions of 
science, even when they seem to militate against what primd 
facie we should have supposed to have been revealed. On the 
other hand, if some conclusion to which science seems to point 
throws a serious difficulty in the way of what we have been in 
the habit of considering was revealed to us, specially if it be 
a difficulty of a moral nature, we have a perfect right to 
demand severer evidence before we can accept it than what 
might have sufficed to lead us to regard it as in all pro- 
bability true had there been no such appearance of opposition. 
We have moral faculties as well as intellectual, and we have no 
right in judging of the probability of a conclusion to make an 
arbitrary selection of one part of our complex nature, and 
ignore the rest. We may indulge as freely as we please in 
our scientific speculations; and in most cases there is nothing 
but scientific evidence to bear on the probability, or other- 
wise, of the conclusions to which we are led as being the 
most probable. But in those rare cases in which there is 
we have no right to shut out of court all but the scientific 
witnesses, and give our verdict on their evidence alone. 
The Chairman (Sir Joseph Fayrer, K.C.S.I., F.R.S.). — I am sure I shall 
only be expressing the unanimous feeling of this meeting by tendering 
our thanks to Professor Stokes for the very instructive and edifying 
paper he has just read. The paper deals, as you will have perceived, with 
many interesting questions — questions which have greatly occupied men’s 
thoughts of late, and are occupying them at the present moment. In fact, 
the paper is one that would afford subjects for discussion and inquiry to 
an almost indefinite extent. I shall not anticipate any of the questions 
which some, I hope, will put, but will at once invite you to begin the 
discussion. Will Sir J. Pis don Bennett give us his views ? 
Sir J. Risdon Bennett, Y.P.R.S. — It is with extreme diffidence that I ven- 
ture to respond to our Chairman’s request that I should offer a few remarks on 
the subject of Professor Stokes’s paper, because I regard it as one which 
requires, on our part, a great deal of consideration before we can publicly 
express our conclusions upon it. It is certainly a paper requiring a great 
deal more consideration than I can venture to give at the present moment. 
Therefore, I shall not offer anything approaching to criticism on the way in 
which the subject has been dealt with ; I may, however, say, that it strikes 
me Professor Stokes has taken precisely the line which is most likely to be 
productive of good in the present state of public opinion upon this question. 
