Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th, 1899 (IA b24975941).pdf/31

 There have always been two schools of thought in regard to scientific inquiry. One school, fearful lest inquiry into proximate causes should lessen our reverence for the ultimate cause, protests that "all is vanity," and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow." The other school finds in wisdom a spirit "clear in utterance. . . unpolluted ... loving what is good . . . an effulgence from everlasting light, and an unspotted mirror of the working of God." It is quite impossible not to admit that our increased knowledge of the laws which regulate the visible universe has increased our living faith and added to the glory of God, while it has made it more difficult for men to make gods after their own image and use them for their own purposes. Modern medicine is teaching us that much bodily suffering is due to man's wilful neglect of the beneficent laws of nature. That diseases are due to ignorance and disregard of law, and are not "sent" as scourges by a etulant and capricious deity is clearly a doctrine which, in no way, dims the glory of God.

That "the steadfast searching out of the secrets of nature by way of experiment is the most promising path to social progress," is a doctrine which at no time has commanded universal assent. There have always been fatalists, who have argued that we must accept, without question, what is sent us; that we must bow in submission to a " will" without really seeking to find out what that "will" is.