his head, it bowed in humbler adoration. And so that single man was able to do more for science than all the irreligious scientists of the last three centuries have accomplished, while he bore an appalling load of suffering with a patience that was sublime, and, dying, left this epitaph for his tombstone: "In Christo pie obiit."
Of Sir Isaac Newton's, and Michael Faraday's, and Sir William Hamilton's, and Sir James Y. Simpson's religious life, not to mention the whole cloud of witnesses, we need not tell what is known to all men. But the history of science shows that not the most gifted, not the most learned, not the most industrious, gain the loftiest vision, but that only the pure in heart see God. And all true science is a new sight of God.
Herbert Spencer says: "Science may be called an extension of the perceptions by means of reasoning" ("Recent Discussions," p. 60). And we may add, religion may be called an extension of the perceptions by means of faith. And having so said, have we not paraphrased Paul? "Faith is confidence in things hoped for, conviction of things not seen" (Heb. xi. 1). Science has the finite for its domain, religion the infinite; science deals with the things seen, and religion with the things not seen. When Dr. Hutton, of Edinburgh, announced, in the last century, "In the economy of the world I can find no traces of a beginning, no prospect of an end," it is said that scientific men were startled and religious men were shocked. Why should they be? The creation of the universe and its end are not questions of science, and can be known only as revealed to faith. And so Paul says: "Through faith we apprehend intellectually that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that that which is seen may have sprung from that which is not seen" (Heb. xi. 3).
| PLASTICITY OF INSTINCT. |
By GEORGE J. ROMANES.
NOW that the doctrine which is maintained by Mr. Douglass A. Spalding on this subject has proved itself so completely victorious in overcoming the counter-doctrine of "the individual-experience psychology"—and this along the whole line both of fact and theory it seems unnecessary for any one to adduce additional facts in confirmation of the views which Mr. Spalding advocates.[1] I shall therefore confine myself to detailing a few results yielded by experiments which were designed to illustrate the subordinate doctrine thus alluded to in Mr. Spalding's article:
- ↑ See Popular Science Monthly for January, 1876.
