80;

that when they become wiser they shall find them both daughters of God, given "for the relief of man's estate."

Science has, it must be confessed, unsettled many minds. It deals with the visible and the tangible, with what men handle and enjoy. It seems to supply the human mind with a grasp of certainty. Our sensuous nature is gratified by seeing the mysteries of creation apparently solved before our very eyes, and all the component portions of the earth weighed, measured, and classified by it. The outward and the concrete fascinate us, and we accept them as realities. All the while we are forgetting that we give that which we seem to get. All that we find in nature is matter, perhaps in its farthest reach we might say it is force. But we give our mind to it; we impart our ideas of law and weight, and measure and classification. These are all projections from our minds. They are the revelations which we affix to Nature, which we appear to receive from her. This is easily to be proved. We have only to remember the various conceptions which from time to time have been received as explanatory of the activities or the appearances of nature; and we shall find them all ideas formed in the minds of men, and then impressed upon nature. By-and-bye these suggestive conceptions do not suffice the hunger of the mind to know, and other conceptions replace them. Science is therefore changeable and uncertain; none of its revelations are abiding; and even those revelations which it seems to give it gets from the minds of thinkers.

Science is the interpretation of the universe to the spirit of man, as we in our vain-glory imagine. It is really the explanation to itself of the feelings of our spirits. Its certainty consists in its harmony with our thoughts. Now in this it differs not a whit from theology; whose evidence also is its harmony with the requirements of the spirit. Theology and science, in our opinion, are merely the constructions from given data-the world in the one case, and the word in the other-of our own notions of inner feeling and outward seeming. It is ourselves who are at once science and religion. To be complete men we ought to be both. Most frequently we study only one side, and so become sceptical of the other. The theologian distrusts science, and the scientific man distrusts theology, from incompleteness of culture. When men have seen that truth and faith are one, they will see that they have been in error when they opposed science to theology. In former ages of the world, theology, working from within, satisfied itself of the truth of Scripture, and distrusted science, even persecuted it; in our day we have been so seized upon by the love of the world, that we have grown to doubt the existence of anything else; and we abominate theology, and would persecute it were we strong enough. Thus science induces scepticism, and yet science is only the inner circle of that truth of which theology by faith sees the outer portion-touching on the infinite.

P. H.

NEGATIVE ARTICLE.-II.

THERE are few questions at the present day more important than that regarding the influence of science on the mind. __All are agreed as to its high value and paramount importance. But, strange to say, all are not agreed as to the salutary character of the effects it produces. Nor is this difference in opinion of recent origin. From the days of Pythagoras and Galileo down to our own times science has found itself often opposed by popular and religious prejudices. And this is not to be wondered at. Having in view the intimate relations existing between science and the religious convictions of men, that those who have embraced, and allowed their whole lives to be regulated and swayed by a form of faith, should sometimes guard these convictions with indiscriminate zeal, is a fact which, while deserving it may be of our pity, commands at the same time our unqualified assent. But while we may extend our pity to results inevitable, though unpleasant, we are not called on to grant the same indulgence to the causes from which they flow. While, in the pestilential vapours of the camp, the festering wounds of the dying should have our warmest sympathy, it is with far different feelings we would regard the foul despot who aims by them to destroy the balance of human rights and privileges, and to array man with sword in hand against his brother. And in the same manner, though scepticism in some cases appears to result from the teachings of science, it will be our aim in the sequel to prove that scepticism is not derived from science as from its direct and legiti

mate source.

To define the precise meaning of the terms in which this debate is expressed is a task in a certain degree both difficult and delicate. Science (ex scientia) is taken by some to mean knowledge in general, by others it is understood to apply only to important truths, and by others still it is applied rather to the principles on which truth is founded; while art is used to signify the application of these principles to the more ordinary purposes of life.

The boundaries by which scepticism is limited are equally indefinite. Applied at first to the disciples of Pyrrho, it afterwards became characteristic of those who refused to give credence to divine revelation, and who preferred to be the wilful enemies of demonstrated truth.

Before endorsing conclusions as settled, we have always been accustomed to examine the foundations on which they rest. Adhering to our practice, we would now glance at what seems to us the object of science, remembering that by its object may be determined the tendency of an action.

And first, science is incompatible with probabilities. We call a thing probable when our views regarding it become so conflicting as almost to evade the power of our discrimination. By perception we may correct and increase our ideas of a subject, and by judgment determine to which of these are due our esteem and regard.

Experience should decide on the extent to which such judgment is applicable, and in proportion to the universality of the application will rank the right to be held as among the fixed principles of science the truths of which the judgment is the exponent. But if in the process opposing ideas confound our powers of judgment, it is absurd that we attempt to place the subject under judgment among the classified forms of scientific truth. Hence with Dr. Thomas Brown we say, "To know only to doubt is but the first step in philosophy, and to rest at this first step is either imbecility or idleness."

A distinction, however, should be preserved between the object proper and incidental objects. The monsoon of the desert, we doubt not, in its fatal fury was destined, by purifying a pestilential atmosphere, to render salubrious and habitable a region from which man must otherwise be excluded, or in which he must die. Yet who will say that while this beneficial purpose is served, others of a more doubtful tendency are not simultaneously accomplished. Who will question that human hopes and efforts are frustrated, that the march of the explorer is mercilessly arrested, and the scanty bloom and verdure are involved in common destruction, by what is seemingly an agent of death? And so with science. Some one has well said that "science is the classification of relations." But when relations are so nearly equal as only to be distinguished with difficulty, to adjust the balance on such circumstances requires the nicest discernment and discrimination, To recognize the primary though ulterior object in such a case requires a sagacity equal to that which could trace kindness in distempered currents of the desert, as they spread devastation in their track. But we refuse to class all persons who doubt as sceptics. To doubt the truth of a proposition is sometimes a laudable and highly intellectual exercise. But he who is alike uncertain as to where his doubts should begin, and where end, is, we affirm, a sceptic devoid of both reason and judgment. If one thus situate were wise enough to know which part of this great chain of truth to submit to the test, and know when to be satisfied with the proofs afforded of its strength, he might easily convince himself of its power, while he would be saved from the hopelessness of scepticism. Hence we infer that since science is incompatible with probabilities, and since scepticism obtains only among probabilities, scepticism is incompatible with, and so cannot legitimately be derived from, science.

But, by our definition, scepticism implies also a rejection, as such, of the truths of divine revelation. And here a host of the literati of our own and other times are marshalled before us in a pomp and splendour which are not their own. La Place and

D'Alembert, Mirabeau and Voltaire, in France; in our country, the notorious Paine, Hume, and Gibbon, are to our opponents what the vain Goliath was to the Philistines—the haughty exponents of a compound of weakness which is mistaken for strength. But is there nothing in the character of the men, or in the circumstances con

nected with the times in which they lived, to account in some degree at least for their admitted opposition to all revealed truth?

Now, first, we know the man is more or less than human who, with equal satisfaction, can endure, applause, and censure. If through some base or sordid motive, we violate a law of universal obligation, it follows by natural sequence to wish its enactments invalid, or its authority powerless. That three, at least, of the first four already mentioned were noted for the profligacy of their lives, seeking

"In noisy mirth to drown the anguish of their soul ”

(perhaps in worse), has not, we think, ever been disputed. The dying stings of a conscience whose rights had been so cruelly bartered must remind them of a power to which they owe subjection in spite of all their efforts to erase the last traces of the divine image from the soul. And giving the credit of sincerity, always claimed by those holding different if not contradictory opinions, we are obliged to infer that having once formed conclusions regarding an object, by far the easier part is to support them with arguments. Besides, in the case of La Place, his mind being rigidly trained to find truth only in the results of abstruse mathematics, he looked with suspicion upon the less certain but far higher and more important evidence of moral reasoning. Applying the subtleties of the higher mathematics to religion, he of course fails in arriving at correct results, since the subjects are totally diverse, and must be investigated to be understood by different modes of analysis. Bonaparte, quick at discerning character, having made La Place one of his ministers, soon found, as the Emperor said, "that he sought subtleties in every subject, and carried into his official employment the spirit and method of infinitely small quantities." From a wellknown law of physiology it is to be expected that, by confining their attention so exclusively to one department of knowledge, and the cultivation of one set of faculties, they would dwarf the other powers of the mind. "These men," says Dr. Hitchcock, "are rather examples of malformation and distortion in the philosophical world, instead of fair proportion and full development.'

There is still another reason which occurs to us as exercising a powerful influence in giving a sceptical bias to their minds. The civil life of France was passing through the most violent revolution, probably, to which any country has ever been subjected. Loosened reins were given to all modes of thought, and to all forms of passion. Freed from the political chains of despotism, so high had become the fermentation of opinions within the national breast as no longer to be restrained. In such a whirlpool of anarchy and confusion, materials were not wanting to foster a spirit of infidel antagonism to all religion. Macaulay writes,-"The punishments which the priests were able to inflict were sufficient to irritate, but not sufficient to destroy. Orthodoxy soon became a synonym for ignorance and stupidity. It was as necessary to the character of an accomplished

man that he should despise the religion of his country as that he should know his letters."

The circumstances of Gibbon's case are even stronger in freeing science from the charge of leading to scepticism. When a mere boy, in writing "The Age of Sesostris," by wilfully adopting a lie to bridge over an historical discrepancy, he gave evidence of that inquisitive perversity of spirit which led him afterwards repeatedly to`cast off the religion of his fathers. But while giving decided preference to the ad judicium over ad verecundiam mode of conducting a debate, yet if numerical strength is to decide, the princes of intellectual science will rank themselves with us. Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Pascal, Boyle, Copernicus, Linnæus, Boerhave, Dalton, and Whewell, who rest from their labours; and among the living, such men as Herschel, Brewster, and a multitude of others, form surely a noble monument to the victories of science, and their complete compatibility with the stability of truth. "It is not 80," writes Dr. Thomas Brown, "that Nature has abandoned us with principles which we must fear to examine, and with truths and illusions which we must never dare to separate. In teaching us what our powers are incapable of attaining, she has at the same time taught us what truths they may attain; and within this boundary we have the satisfaction of knowing that she has placed all the truths that are important for our virtue and happiness. He whose eyes are clearest to discern the bounding circle cannot surely be the dullest to perceive the truths that are within. It is Ignorance that, with dazzled eyes just opening from the darkness of the night, perceives that she has been dreaming, without being able to distinguish in the sunshine what objects really are existing around." Or with Sir John Herschel, one of the brightest living ornaments of science, "The character of the true philosopher is to hope all things not impossible, and to believe all things not unreasonable.” But grant that science does lead to scepticism, and consequences will follow from which even our opponents will shrink abashed. Since more real pleasure would be found in simple ignorance than in stores of perplexing knowledge, they would cut at the root of all philosophical investigation. They would brand with reproach the noble struggles of antiquity when groping, through mists and darkness, their way to truth. They would stamp as foolish the modern triumph of that inventive genius which—

"Binds the sun

And planets to their spheres,"

and which has done so much for the world and for mankind. But they would do more. The proposition questioned is absolute. They would (by necessary consequence) deny their own existence, and believe themselves a nonentity incapable of believing!

J. C. M. DERRY.