Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/71

Rh. These tendencies are advanced in their progress a step by the experience of each individual life.

Having, then, expressed our dissatisfaction with the method of theological authority, from its having attempted problems which as yet are beyond the scope of the human intellect, and because of its erroneous notions as to the knowability of truth, let us endeavor to describe the method of science which we would adopt in the whole sphere of our mental activity. The scientific method is nothing very new or unfamiliar; it is simply ordinary thinking, corrected by the canons of a more exact and cautious procedure. It is organized, common sense coming into contact with fact, and carefully sifting the evidence derived from fact. Business men employ it in importing or manufacturing their wares, in estimating the demands of markets, and ascertaining the standing of their employés and customers. Physicians act according to it in diagnosing their cases, prescribing treatment, or operating in surgery. Lawyers employ it in supporting their pleas and arguments; and judges use it in rendering their decisions within the limits of the written law and of their precedents. The scientific method ignores no faculty of man or fact in Nature; it recognizes to the full our emotions, affections, and sentiments, but subordinates all these to the intellect, whose dictum alone is given command over the educated will. Authority relies on inspiration, revelation, the miraculous, and the supernatural; science relies on brain, on experience, the mastery of facts by accurate and patient thought. The one receives or imagines it receives, the other acquires and has no opinion not subject to revision as new evidence comes in. It entertains no beliefs beyond evidence, and seeks none. It knows nothing of infallible guides without or within, nothing of authorities which may not be doubted and which submit no proof of their assertions. Science endeavors to substitute convictions for mere assent; and, instead of mechanical adhesion, would give to genuine authority the intelligent concurrence earned by the labor of the individual mind. It is not because science has won its chief victories in the physical world, where the comparative simplicity of its problems has invited attack, that we should therefore have an imperfect idea of its scope. Its scope includes the whole range of human thought and feeling. Science is not limited to fields where clocks and micrometers may be used to measure, or logarithmic tables be employed to compute; it recognizes human emotions, sentiments, and will. To these it would direct study, no less than to the areas where exact results are attainable.

Applying, then, the method of science to an examination of theology, it appears to consist in an attempt at explaining the facts of Nature, and the sanctions of duty, in distant ages of scant knowledge. Its scriptural revelations come down to us through centuries of untrustworthy custodians, and when they reach us at last they are not revelations to us, but hearsay about revelations, and must be judged by the