The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902, September 26, 1901, Page 11, Image 11
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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-