IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCES. 
23 
May I venture to suggest that the right honorable author, 
not being expert in the simple phases of scientific effort, has 
misconceived the mission and meaning of science altogether. 
He says of science, “ Foundations of Belief, ” p. 94: “ Its busi- 
ness is to provide us with a theory of nature.” Never in the 
world! Its business is to depict iirAure as Vv^e find her and to 
give such account as may be possible of agencies which effect 
her changes. Science offers no exjManation of nature The 
man of science may frame hypotheses, but they are only as 
instruments of research for his own convenience, to be used 
and cast away when their purpose is attained, or when better 
are at hand. The facts attained by science, the methods of 
discovering truih would remain precisely what they are, 
whether our theory of nature be that of the eternity of a self- 
created universe, whether that of the old-time theologian who 
li-erally interpreted his six creative days, or whether with the 
Christian child we reverentl^^ say, ‘Mn the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth.” AVith the “meaning of 
the world,” as philosophers put it, science has nothing what- 
ever to do; she would simply teacli man such use of the world 
as is conducive to his own safety and well-being, such a way of 
looking at the w^orld as will deliver him from fear. Surely to 
the “meaning of the world” to “theories of nature” the race 
has given sufficient attention; is it not high time we should 
strive to comprehend that part of the world which most 
directl3^ concerns us, and which has all the while lain unnoted 
within our reach? But even here Mr. Balfour would discredit 
science. Basing an argument on wdiat he terms “mental 
physiology” he impugns the evidence of the senses; he 
declares that science has no evidence of the existence of the 
w^orld. of which it tells, is based upon an illusion, exists 
because of an erroneous view of the natural world. The plain, 
every-day man of science can for once scarcely trust his eyes 
as he reads such pages. 
Now, to any one w’^ith sufficient mental equipoise to abide by 
the earth, to stick to that w^hich the whole experience of ani- 
mate creation in all past ages has proven true, to any one who 
abides the common appreciation of fact, such a book, as far as 
the methods of science is concerned, appears simply as a jeu 
(Vcsprlt, a bit of dialectic humor; but to multitudes of people 
who will not do this thing, wdio, on account of innate prejudice. 
