20 
IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCES. 
service to the state, in the fact that it is a perpetual protest 
against false science, science falsely so-called, insanity and 
nonsense of every description, into which civilized people are 
apparently so easily and constantly led astray. I think that I 
speak with the approval of most students when I say that the 
common people stand to-day more in need of our methods than 
of our facts. The habit of trusting only to accurate and oft 
repeated observation, the habit of correlating fact with fact, the 
habit of appealing constantly to some independent check, or 
verification, of accepting nothing that does not pass the ordeal 
of such scrutiny and test, such habit, if it could be imparted to 
our people now, and once for all, would certainly be of more 
value to them by far than all the facts we are likely to set 
before them for many a decade. The credulity, the absolutely 
infantile credulity, of some of our most intelligent people 
surpasses belief. The fact that “truth lies at the bottom of 
a well,” that its attainment is difficult in the extreme, never 
occurs to most men, apparently, at all The song of the veriest 
charlatan meets readier credence than the voice of the labor- 
ious student. Accordingly one craze, or form of infatuation 
after another, sweeps over enlightened humanity. Forty 
years ago it was spiritism or spiritualism; to-day it is Christian 
Science. I leave the Christian apologist to disown the first 
portion of the binomial or not, as it may seem to him good; but 
I for one protest against the use of the word science in any 
such connection. Surely science has been long enough in the 
world to stand for something real in court, to possess a charac- 
ter and a reputation that has standing; surely science is 
entitled, once for all, to be relieved from the imputations 
of modern superstition and self delusion. The one thing for 
which the man of science strives is the ascertainment of facts, 
as these are appreciable by the senses aided by all instruments 
of precision; the one thing that so-called Christian Science 
denies, and all the while refuses, is what the senses of man 
declare to be a fact. There can by no possibility be science 
here where truth is studiously excluded and yet thousands of 
Americans, possibly hundreds of lowans, are to-day inclined to 
spend their money and their time in pursuit of this latest 
delusion in the mirage book of time. 
Of course I shall not be accused of refusing to my suffering 
fellow-man any form of solace which humanity, individually or 
collectively, may possibly bring to aid him; but let us have no 
