Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/456

440 Is not all life a discipline of determining probabilities? It would seem that God intends that generally the certainties shall be known only to himself. He has probably shown us a very few certainties, more for the purpose of furnishing the idea than for any practical purpose, as absolute certainty is necessary for him, while probabilities are sufficient for us. All science is purely a classification of probabilities.

We do not know that the same result will follow the same act in its several repetitions, but believe that it will; and we believe it so firmly that if a professor had performed a successful experiment before a class in chemistry, he would not hesitate to repeat the experiment after a lapse of a quarter of a century. Scientific men are not infidels. Of no men may it be more truly said that they "walk by faith." They do not creep, they march. Their tread is on made ground, on probabilities; but they believe they shall be supported, and according to their faith so is it done unto them.

And no men better know than truly scientific men that this probability can never become certainty. In the wildest dreams of fanaticism—and there are fanatics in the laboratory, as there are in the sanctuary of God and in the temple of Mammon—it has never been believed that there shall come a man who shall know all things that are, all things that have been, all things that shall be, and all things that can be, in their properties, their attributes, and their relations. Until such a man shall arise, science must always be concerned with the cognition of that which is the real truth as to probabilities, or with probable cognitions of that which is not only real truth, but absolute truth. A scientific writer, then, when he states that any proposition has been "proved," or anything "shown," means that it has been proved probable to some minds, or shown to some—perhaps to all—intelligent persons as probable. If he have sense and modesty, he can mean no more, although he does not cumber his pages or his speech with the constant repetition of that which is to be presumed, even as a Christian in making his appointments does not always say Deo volente, because it is understood that a Christian is a man always seeking to do what he thinks to be the will of God, in submission to the providence of God.

A scientific man ridicules the idea of any religious man claiming to be "orthodox." It must be admitted to be ridiculous, just as ridiculous as would be the claim of a scientific man to absolute certainty and unchangeableness for science. The more truly religious a man is, the more humble he is; the more he sees the deep things of God, the more he sees the shallow things of himself. He claims nothing positively. He certainly does not make that most arrogant of all claims, the claim to the prerogative of infinite intelligence. There can exist only one Being in the universe who is positively and absolutely orthodox, and that is God. In religion, as in science, we walk