Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/247

Rh But we have only to follow the reverend doctor a few pages, until we find that hypotheses, so far from being extra-scientific, wholly make up our science. He mounts Hamilton's definition for the purpose of trampling upon scientific hypotheses. But, in his zeal for narrowing the sphere of science, he arrives at the remarkable conclusion that "all science is purely a classification of probabilities." He has at length kicked the definition completely from under him, and remounted a platform entirely composed of hypotheses. He, however, is careful not to say, "It is certain that there are no certainties." Still he leaves us wholly in the dark as to where may be found those "very few certainties" which it appears to him God has seen fit to show us, "more for the purpose of furnishing the idea than for any practical purpose." The God of the modern divine has still about him a touch of the jealousy of the Zeus of Æschylus. He would have chained to the rocks the modern seeker after hidden knowledge, the invader of his own domain of certainties.

We say that we are left completely in the dark as to where are to be found those few certainties which God has seen fit to show us as specimens. We are assured that they are not to be found in science. This is only classified probabilities. The "imperial science of logic" has been demolished with the rest. We wonder whether it is because science embraces only real truth that it is uncertain or probable, or is it owing to its methodical logical arrangement that it has acquired this character? He should remember that most people have faculties called memories, that last them through several pages of reading, and that there is a chance for mediate or remote contradictions to be detected.

Again, in his zeal to prove that all science and religion stand upon the common basis of faith, he overleaps himself, and gives us as the results of his logic, "Ex nihilo geometria fit." So I suppose we may be allowed to say likewise, "Ex nihilo religio fit." Is that what he started out to prove? No, it was only this very sensible proposition, that "we can acquire no knowledge by our logical understanding without faith in the laws of mental operations." This simply amounts to saying that we cannot consistently believe in the products of thinking except we believe in faculties of thinking. We suppose that no one doubts that. But believing that by no means involves the. assumption that science or knowledge rests upon the same basis as religious faith. It is a very different thing to believe in our own experiences, feelings, sensations, observations, comparisons, memories, representations, etc., and to believe in certain fundamental religious dogmas, as, for example, "God is an infinite person." God is three infinite persons. The second of these three infinite persons, which all make one infinite person, is now sitting in heaven upon a throne on the right hand of the first infinite person, neither of which has any parts, but all three make one indivisible unity. Most men will