Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/116

106 and desires, is the most kindly and generous of helpmates, and not a tyrannic lord; that these outward appearances are but the shows of an inward reality which is entirely human; that these phenomenal forms and events are but the symbols of an eternal Love and Truth, which the great spiritual Sun of the Universe projects and photographs upon the sensitive plates of our finite human intelligence."

Thus, while I ascribed to science a potent and beneficent efficacy, first, in discharging the mind of its fears of Nature and of other superstitions; second, in perfecting civilization; and, lastly, in promising the surest groundwork for speculative generalizations, both naturalistic and theological, you represent me as deprecating its influences, and as even questioning its utility. That was scarcely fair. How, indeed, could I do so? Holding profoundly to the conviction (how derived is not here the question) that there is but one real Life in the Universe, whose infinite Love is the ground of all Force, and whose infinite truth is the ground of all Law, and that phenomenal Nature is but the varied manifestation of that life to and through the human mind, it would be intellectual suicide in me to attempt imposing fetters upon any legitimate search of Nature's methods. Every step we make in unfolding her secrets is a new revelation of an adorable goodness and wisdom, and a new help toward a nobler future.

But then I said and it was the whole purport of my speech, made in the interests of science as well as religion that we can only expect these results from true science, which investigates what Nature really is, and not from a hasty and presumptuous science, which pretends to give us what Nature may be supposed to be. And my criterion of true science, suggested in a phrase, was, that the methods and results of it bear the impress of exactitude or certainty. You remark, as if you did not receive these simple and fundamental principles, that the "exact sciences" are exact, while others are not. There, I think, we differ or misunderstand each other. I am aware that none of the sciences are exact in the mathematical sense of the word, save the ideal or abstract sciences; but it is none the less true that the real or concrete sciences are exact, in the usual sense of the word, both in their methods and products. If they are not exact, where does the inexactness come in? In the observation of facts? Then the induction is vitiated. In the induction itself? Then the law arrived at is imperfect. In the deductive verification or proof? Then we have no reason for trusting our process. Biology, psychology, and sociology, you say, are sciences and certain sciences; to which my reply is, that, to the extent in which they are not precise, they are not sciences. Indeed, saving in a popular and convenient sense, I should be disposed to doubt whether they are yet to be ranked as more than inchoate sciences. They belong to the domain of science, have gathered some of the richest materials for science, and have attained to some extent a scientific value; but there is yet so much uncertainty hanging over broad regions in each that we must await the future for the resolution of many unresolved questions, which may give a new aspect to the whole. Biology is the most advanced, but rather in its natural history and classification, than in its knowledge of the profounder laws of life, that are yet to be found. Psychology is so little of a science, that the teachers of it hardly agree on the fundamental points; or, if it be a science, whose exposition of it are we to accept, Sir William Hamilton's or Mr. Mill's, Herbert Spencer's or Dr. Porter's, who all profess to be experimental and inductive, and all disagree? As to Sociology, the name for which was invented only a few years since by Comte, it is still in a chaotic condition; and, unless Mr. Spencer, whose few introductory chapters are alone made public, succeeds in giving it consistency and form, it can hardly be called more than a hope. But, be the truth what it may, in respect to these particular branches of knowledge, I still insist that certainty is the criterion of true science, and that, if we give that criterion up, science loses its authority, its prestige, its assurance of march, and its sovereign position as an arbiter in the varying struggles of doctrine.

Well, then the examples I gave, without mentioning names, of what I considered false science, were, first, the gross