Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/253

Rh never make a mistake. But, the moment she leaves this path, she is in danger, or rather she is sure to go wrong, because whatever works by other than scientific methods is not science, and at best can only put on a kind of scientific garb, and masquerade in scientific phraseology.

Are there not some indications that we are not yet altogether beyond this danger? Are we not even more or less exposed to it at this particular time? Some scientific writers are certainly disposed to talk quite as much about their conclusions and theoretical explanations as about the phenomena they describe. There is no harm in this (except that it occupies a good deal of time that might be otherwise employed), provided they keep the boundary-line well marked between what they know and what they think on the subject in question. But they do not always do this. The hypothetical explanations are sometimes erected into a law, or principle, or theory, which, in the author's mind, evidently overshadows in importance every thing else. So we are sometimes supposed to have acquired a valuable piece of information when we are only, as the French say, "getting our pay in words." How much has been said and written for the past few years about protoplasm! Now, a student of physiology would be very excusable for thinking, from the manner in which this term is used, that protoplasm was some newly-discovered and important substance, with definite physical and chemical properties, and of the highest consequence in regard to vital organization. He would be considerably disappointed on finding it to be only a word representing a certain set of ideas, or at best a group of many various substances, each one of them specifically different from the rest.

There is even a certain kind of authority claimed, at least by implication, for some of these theoretical notions; and there is no doubt that they are occasionally assigned an established position as accepted truths, to which they are very far from being entitled. If it were not so improbable that Science could ever be induced to imitate in the least degree her old theological enemy, we might suspect even now a disposition in some minds to frame for us a sort of scientific Nicene Creed, the merit of believing in which would not depend exclusively upon the possession of sufficient reliable evidence. If such a creed were drawn up just at present, it would probably read something like this:

Now, we all know that theories are useful in their way, if confined within a very small compass, and employed only to stimulate rather than satisfy inquiry, and to suggest the direction in which new facts may be discovered. But, when they are raised to a higher dignity, and demand our belief in them as representing the actual constitution of Nature, then they are a misfortune to everybody concerned. If we treat them with any more respect than they deserve, we shall suffer for it inevitably by the loss of something which is infinitely more valuable than any of them. The records of the immediate past show the achievements which have been accomplished by means of strict adherence to exact methods of investigation. Should the scientific mind of to-day become ever so little intoxicated with its success, and undertake to decide questions which are beyond its horizon, it will certainly stultify itself, and lose the universal support and confidence which it has now so fairly acquired. For that reason I think that Mr. Godwin, in his Tyndall Dinner speech, was doing good service for science and scientific men, and that we are indebted to him for placing in a very distinct light the only source of danger for scientific interests in the future.J. C. D.

It is well known that many religious newspapers construed several of the speeches at the Tyndall banquet as righteous rebukes of the guest of the evening, on account of his irreligious science. His statement below was called out by a leading article in the Christian Intelligencer of February 13th, entitled "The Tyndall Banquet,"