tional is required to erect suitable buildings, and $200,000 more to raise the endowment to the point necessary for carrying out Prof. Agassiz's plans. If these arrangements be consummated, a Natural History school of high character and large usefulness cannot fail to be the result. How far it will be organized in the interest of original scientific investigations, or in the general interests of education, or to what degree both objects will be combined, remains to be seen. It is to be hoped that Mr. Anderson's generosity will prove contagious, and that not only will Prof. Agassiz be furnished with the funds he requires, but that men of wealth in different parts of tho country will contribute to kindred enterprises in their own localities. For the organization of such Scientific Teachers' Institutes as we have suggested, large sums of money would not be required. Buildings can be found suitable for school sessions, lectures, and demonstrations, and no care or outlay would be necessary to provide for the living of students and professors. The expenses to be incurred would be only for the liberal remuneration of the professorial corps, and for the various scientific appliances needed to illustrate the teaching. The project is feasible, if there is sufficient interest in the subject to carry it out.
MR. GODWIN'S LETTER.
We publish an able communication from Mr. Parke Godwin, called forth by our strictures, in the April Monthly, on his speech at the Tyndall Banquet, and restating, with more fulness, the views there expressed. With much that he says we cordially agree, and, had the position to which we mainly objected been originally stated as it is now, there would have been less occasion for criticism. In his address, after some remarks on the great results of modern science, Mr. Godwin said: "But it is real science, with its rigid restrictions to its own sphere and its exact methods, and not any pseudoscience, that will accomplish these grand results." He then gave examples, and classed among them the doctrine of Evolution as interpreted by Herbert Spencer. But, in his present communication, Mr. Godwin admits that "the nebular, the Darwinian, and the Spencerian views are hypotheses quite within the domain of scientific theory, and capable, to a certain extent, of explaining the phenomena to which they refer." He allows their legitimacy, which is what we contended for; but he denies that they are fairly-accredited scientific truths, and here we suspect he is again mistaken.
What, then, are we to understand by scientific truth? Mr. Godwin inventories the chimeras of the past, and, pointing to the débris of abandoned theories which strew the road of science, admonishes us not "to be too confident that our little systems of natral law will not, like other systems of thought referred to by Tennyson, have their day." The lesson is a wholesome one; but are scientists the parties that most need it? Is it they that are forever affirming "finalities," "absolute verities," and "eternal principles?" In what school are men so trained to distrust themselves, and to hold their views subject to constant revision, as in the school of science? Is it not ever seeking to supersede existing truth by larger truth? Chemistry reposes upon its ascertained elements, but chemists are prepared to see them at any time abolished or resolved into a single one, and in that case the gentlemen of the laboratory would be the first to throw up their hats in exultation. Even the principle of gravity is not held as a finality: Faraday labored for its reinterpretation, and, should it disappear in some larger generalization of dynamical law, physicists will not go in-
