Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/663

Rh One of the questions of the day is this: Is "to believe" more than "to know"? Shall a sane man extend belief in directions where he has no knowledge and in lines outside the reach of his power to act? Can belief soar in space not traversable by "organized common sense"? If such distinction is made between "knowing" and "believing," which of the two has precedence as a guide for action? Is belief to be tested by science? Or is science useful only where belief is indifferent to the subject-matter? If belief is subordinate to the tests of science, to be accepted or rejected in the degree of its accord with human experience, then it is simply an annex to science, a footnote to human experience, and the authority of the latter is supreme. If, however, truth comes to us from sources outside of human experience, it must come in some pure form, free from human errors. As such it must claim the first place. In this event the progress of science will be always on a lower plane than the progress of belief.

In a recent address before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Marquis of Salisbury made in brief this contention: The central thought of modern science is evolution, the change from the simple to the complex. This implies not only the fundamental unity of all life, but the fundamental unity of all matter and perhaps of all force as well. In spite of the claims of scientific men, even the fact of organic evolution is far from demonstration; while of inorganic evolution, the development of the chemical elements, science can tell us nothing. Wherefore the marquis, in view of the failure of science to keep up with the progress of belief, grows jocose and patronizing. His advice to his scientific associates might be stated in the words of Thackeray, that "we should think small beer of ourselves and pass around the bottle."

More recently another English statesman, Mr. Arthur J. Balfour, has discussed the Foundations of Belief. He has shown that the methods of science can not give us absolute truth. Its methods are "of the earth, earthy." Its claim of trust in the infallibility of its own processes has no higher authority than the claim of infallibility made at times by religious organizations. For as only the senses and the reason can be appealed to in support of the claims of the senses and the reason, the argument of science is of necessity reasoning in a circle. Science can give us no ground solid enough to bear the weight of belief. Belief must exist, and it may therefore rest on the innate needs of man and the philosophy which is built on these needs in accordance with the authority which the human soul finds sufficient.

Balfour calls attention to the fact that human experience is not in its essence objective. It consists only of varying phases