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* Cbe Conservative * ii
discoveries iu the various branches of
engineering , of medicine and of surgery
which illustrate our ago. And the
power of research in these high realms
pays. Witness the case of Germany ,
which manufactures 88 per cent , of the
chemicals used on the continent of
Europe , because of the chemical dis
coveries made and the knowledge of
chemistry diffused among her people ,
through her universities and technical
schools. It is for lack of chemical
knowledge of clays that America as yet
makes no such porcelain as Germany or
Austria , and the same lack wastes for
us every year millions of dollars worth
of materials and labor in such third or
fourth class pottery as we do make. In
the effort of America to compete indus
trially with European nations , no one
thing is more important than the pro
motion among us of scientific training
in its higher forms.
No man now alive has done so much
to cheapen the great commodities of
commerce and to bring them within
the reach of all as Lord Kelvin ( Sir
William Thomson ) , whose improved
log for showing the speed at which a
ship is sailing , with his contrivance for
quick and accurate sounding and his
elucidation of the laws governing the
movements of the tides , shortens voy
ages , renders navigation safe where
before it was not so , and greatly holds
down the rates of ocean insurance.
Who is Lord Kelvin ? The professor
( now emeritus ) of physics in the uni
versity of Glasgow , where Watt , of
steam engine fame , had been professor
before him. The commercial value of
Professor Tkomson's work as the sci
entific creator of the Atlantic cable I
can only mention. Even apart from
this perhaps the most stupendous con
tribution to civilization which ever
proceeded from a professor's laboratory ,
Lord Kelvin's electrometers and galvan
ometers , and the elucidation imparted
by him to such practical subjects as
elasticity , vortex-motionheatelectricity
and magnetism are enough to make
sensible people cease speaking of a pro
fessor's work as merely theoretical.
Of course learned institutions cannot
claim all the credit for the beneficial
influence exerted by those whom they
educate. Genius is sporadic. It is
largely one of those ultimate facts for
which there is no accounting. Kepler
well illustrates the anomaly of genius
being a man whose ancestry gave no
hint whatever of the phenomenon he
was to be. Much the same is true of
Sir Isaac Newton. Schools cannot
create genius , but they do what is quite
as important , they call it out and train
it.
Confessedly the world has had
memorable teachers who , like Ricordo
and the younger Mill , acquired little or
nothing directly from pedagogue or
professor. We think of George H
Lowes , Herbert Spencer , and Edward
Von Hartmann. The list could be
omowhat stretched out , but at best is
not long. Were it ten times as inolns-
ve as it can be made , its numbers
uld not lessen the force of what has
jeen said. These famous non-academi
cians have all the wealth of college-
trained men's productions to draw
'rom , and utilize these to the uttermost ,
while most of their work is obviously
marred by a certain look of logical
finish which a more orderly mental
lisoipline would have corrected.
Learning enriches the higher life of
lumauity not out of its intellectual
funds alone. Ethical principle and
practice are stiffened by influences
: rom the same source. Instance the
.ove of right for right's sake , the idea
of simple truth irrespective of consequences
quences , which has come into being al
most solely from the inculcation of
ixact science. This is a result for
which those who love righteousness
should be grateful to the positive phil
osophy. In this respect the positivists
have , without thinking of it , become
powerful ethical teachers. They have
insisted , as had never been done before ,
upon the importance of laying aside
prejudice and interest , and getting at
simple , unalloyed fact. There has thus
been called into existence a new , dis
tinct and most beautiful form of the
love for truth. This noble phase of
virtue is emphasized and nourished to
day in every scientific laboratory and
class room throughout the world. It
has come to possess even theology , and
will yet revolutionize that science. It
has gone over into the study of the
past , and founded the science of histor
ical investigation. Many false but
time-honored judgments touching the
men and things of former times are
changing in consequence of the truer
historical apprehension engendered from
this cause. It results that national and
ecclesiastical animosities are becoming
less intense , opening the way for larger
peace and good will among men.
There is an idea as prevalent as it is
baseless and mischievous , that the doc
trine of evolution , in particular , so far
as it is accepted , renders all theistic
or properly religious belief unnecessary
and stupid. Nothing could be more
untrue. The logical necessity of theist-
io belief Darwinism does not so much
as touch. One may admit all that Dar
win himself ever asserted and yet re
main as orthodox as Athanasius.
Logicians never had clumsier falla
cies to laugh at than those by which
sciolists have inferred a materialistic
cosmology entire from a scientist's proo :
itself far from irrefragable of one
single point , the origin of species. Dar
win did not pretend to explain the be
ginning of life. Waiving this and sup
posing life begun , the survival of the
fittest does nothing to explain the ar
rival of the fittest. Those peculiarities
hose variations from type , that occur
ever and anon , " as novelists say , and
play so famous a part in zoological evo-
utionby getting themselves transmit-
ed , these are as deep a mystery as life
tself. Weissman , to be sure , under-
akes to account for these oddities. Ac-
ording to him traits acquired by an in
dividual in the course of its life history
are never passed on to progeny , peou-
iarities that are transmissible being al-
ivays of the germ-plasmio or congenitial
order , the results of fortunate germ-
) lasmio combinations ocouring in sex
ual reproduction. Weissman regards
, he multiplication of transmissible pe
culiarities as the great biological office
of propagation in the sexual way. But ,
as this theory thus carries all present
differences between species back to dif
ferences existing among the protozoa ,
which , Weissman admits , were due
solely to environment , what has been
said is in effect as true under Weissman-
ism as it is under Darwinism proper :
viz : that those potent idiosynoracies out
of which new species issue have no ex
planation within the field of science.
One important thing Darwin did sup
pose that he had made clear : viz ; the
rise of our moral consciousness. But ho
was mistaken. This is the sovereign
mystery of all , and it is a commonplace
of ethical study today that , deftly as
Darwin and Herbert Spencer have
shown something else to be derivative ,
Kant was correct in taking man's sense
of right as an underived piece of nou-
menal fact , as part of the uncreato and
everlasting phase of things.
Not only does the great generalization
by Darwin offer no necessary offense to
faith , but it opens the way for an ap
prehension of the Ultimate Being and
his modes of procedurefar more rational ,
helpful and uplifting than the old view.
Natural theology will have to be recast ,
but its new form will add infinitely to
its impressiveness. We shall find it no
loss to have relinquished the untenable
distributive teleology of Paley , when in
its stead is installed that grander thought
of a cosmic unity reached through the
clash of forces energizing apparently
without aim. Science is destined to
prove at this point an immense mission
ary power.
If asked , then , why I love academic
life and work , I reply : Because in it , wo
have the privilege of delightfully exer
cising our minds in the pursuit of truth ,
a joy doubly rich in that the work can
be carried on by many of us in common :
that oar activity is useful as well as
agreeable , not only aiding the race to
live , but refining civilization , widening
the skirts of light and forwarding all
the high interests of humankind , being
vital to the advance of the material and
of the social sciences alike ; and , lastly ,
that it is a pronounced and positive
force in a strictly moral and religious
way , establishing , not weakening recti-
