Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/720

702 worthless as the rest, lived on as a power in the world of thought because of the ingenuity of his speculations, the impressive beauty of their literary forms, the vitality of classical superstition in later ages, and because his system of ideas has been supposed to favor the fundamental beliefs of Christian theology.

But modern thought made a new starting-point when it began formally to build on the verities of Nature. A new element was then introduced into philosophy which was capable of giving it permanence. The discovery of the laws of motion, for example, was an intellectual acquisition to stand forever. When it was proved that the earth is not the stationary center of the universe, but only a revolving planet, there was given, not only a new fact for all time, but a fact that shattered whole systems of pre-existing opinion, and became a permanent element to fix and regulate the future thinking of mankind. In further instance, the discoveries of the circulation of the blood, of the laws of nutrition, of the double action and reflex functions of the nervvousnervous [sic] system, revealed facts of enduring moment which threw new light upon the nature of man. The establishment of the indestructibility of matter, and that all mutations of material things are governed by this law, was a new key to the understanding of our world which can never be lost. And when the kindred truth of the conservation of energy, or that in the known course of Nature force is never created or destroyed—which Faraday pronounced to be "the highest law in physical science that our faculties permit ns to perceive"—when this mighty principle was demonstrated, whole systems of speculation were undermined, whole realms of previous error were destroyed, and the philosophical interpretation of Nature was put upon a new and indestructible basis. We have given a few illustrations of that element which it was the destiny of science to contribute, and by which it has formed a new epoch of thought; but all the sciences are full of this new element. It consists of contributions of fact and law standing in everlasting contrast with the baseless and transient assumptions of philosophers for the past two thousand years. But the two thousand years of empty philosophical speculation got a mighty headway; and, as our education is still dominated by tradition, the cultivated mind of the age, saturated with the "history of philosophy," remains blinded to the profound significance of that revolution of ideas which modern science has introduced. There are plenty of men whose culture is so full of the past that they are sure to go on spinning systems fanciful and futile as their predecessors; but such work is certain to become more and more anomalous and less and less regarded. For, with the development of science, there has come a new mental culture. Science forms habits of thought. Pursued in its true spirit it enforces a special discipline in the study of truth. It corrects credulity by a wholesome skepticism; it affirms the supremacy of personal observation, and demands caution in forming conclusions. All these requirements are repressive of that wanton exuberance of imaginative invention in which speculative genius is so prone to indulge. The system-maker of these times must know something, must build upon previous acquisitions, or he will neither be listened to by the present nor have a hold upon the future. The rapid growth of science in these days proves that its education and its disciplines have not been without effect, and it is not to be questioned that its method is gradually extending into all the spheres of mental activity. There is here a new element of stability in intellectual constructions of which nothing was known in all the historic epochs of speculation.

The writer in the "Commercial"