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The consideration of that subject would lead into the wide field of the
relation between science and religion. Into that field we lack
competency and time to enter; a few remarks, however, on the subject
may not be out of place. Those remarks, we would fain make in a humble
way irenical. There is need of an Irenicum, for the fact is painfully
notorious that there is an antagonism between scientific men as a class,
and religious men as a class. Of course this opposition is neither felt
nor expressed by all on either side. Nevertheless, whatever may be the
cause of this antagonism, or whoever are to be blamed for it, there can
be no doubt that it exists and that it is an evil.
The first cause of the alienation in question is, that the two parties,
so to speak, adopt different rules of evidence, and thus can hardly
avoid arriving at different conclusions. To understand this we must
determine what is meant by science, and by scientific evidence. Science,
according to its etymology, is simply knowledge. But usage has limited
its meaning, in the first place, not to the knowledge of facts or
phenomena, merely, but to their causes and relations. It was said of
old, "[Greek: hoti] scientiae fundamentum, [Greek: dioti] fastigium." No
amount of materials would constitute a building. They must be duly
arranged so as to make a symmetrical whole.
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