Page:The Harveian oration for 1874.djvu/71

 concealing it, or in the clear sky of early morning when its out line stands out distinct. And so it is, too, in our investigations into scientific questions. If our view is obscured by any prejudice for or against this or that inference, which a fact seems to invalidate or to support, or even if the hues of religious sentiment are allowed to intervene and colour it, we see indistinctly and judge wrongly. It is only the Lumen siccum, the pure light of passionless intellect, which shows things truly and distorts them by no refraction. It is thus only that we can enquire into the truths written by God’s own finger on the world, and on all that inhabit it. ‘Sine odio, sine studio,’ with no prejudice, no favour, for it is eternal truth we seek after; not shocked, nor scandalised, because other seekers as honest as ourselves arrive at conclusions which do not harmonise with ours, for in matters of science at least, ‘it is not impossible that truth may have more shapes than one.’ Therefore, to quote further from the words of the same great master,—

‘Give Truth but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps, for then she speaks not true, as the old Proteus did who spake oracles only