SCIENCE AND MORALS
SCIENCE AND MORALS1
SCIENCE AND MORALS
AND OTHER ESSAYS
BY
SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE
M.A., M.D., Sc.D., LL.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., K.S.G.
OF ST. MICHAEL'S COLLEGE, TORONTO, ONT.
LONDONBURNS & OATES, LTD28 ORCHARD STREET, W1919
TOJOHN ROBERT and MARY O'CONNELLA TOKEN OF SINCERE FRIENDSHIP
Listarkin
September
1919THESE Essays have all in one form or another appeared elsewhere; and I have to thank the Editors of the
Dublin Review
,
Catholic World
,
America
, and
Studies
respectively for kind permission to reproduce them.Some of them appear as they were published, others have been almost rewritten.B. C. A. W.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I.Science and Morals1§ 1. The Gospel of Science1§ 2. Science as a Rule of Life14II.Theophobia and Nemesis26§ 1. Theophobia: its Cause26§ 2. Theophobia: its Nemesis44III.Within and Without the System56IV.Science in "Bondage"74SCIENCE AND MORALS2
V.Science and the War106VI.Heredity and "Arrangement"125VII."Special Creation"142VIII.Catholic Writers and Spontaneous Generation152IX.A Theory of Life160Index of Names175General Index177[Pg 1]
SCIENCE AND MORALSSCIENCE AND MORALS
§ 1. THE GOSPEL OF SCIENCE
In the days before the war the Annual Address delivered by the President of the British Association was wontto excite at least a mild interest in the breasts of the reading public. It was a kind of Encyclical from thereigning pontiff of science, and since that potentate changed every year there was some uncertainty as to hissubject and its treatment, and there was this further piquant attraction, wanting in other and better-knownEncyclicals, that the address of one year might not merely contradict but might even exhibit a lofty contemptfor that or for those which had immediately preceded it.During the three years immediately preceding the war we had excellent examples of all these things. In thefirst of them we were treated to a somewhat belated utterance in opposition to Vitalism. Its arguments weremostly based upon what even to the tyro in chemistry seemed to be rather shaky foundations. Such indeedthey proved to be, since the deductions drawn from[Pg 2] the behaviour of colloids and from Leduc's prettytoys were promptly disclaimed by leading chemists in the course of the few days after the delivery of theaddress.Further, the President for the year 1914 in his address (Melbourne, p. 18)[1] told us that the problem of theorigin of life, which, let us remind ourselves, in the 1912 address was on the point of solution, "still standsoutside the range of scientific investigation," and that when the spontaneous formation of formaldehyde istalked of as a first step in that direction he is reminded of nothing so much as of Harry Lauder, in the characterof a schoolboy, "pulling his treasures from his pock et—'That's a wassherfor makkin motor-cars!'" Nineteenhundred and twelve pinned its faith on matter and nothing else; Nineteen hundred and thirteen assured us that"occurrences now regarded as occult can be examined and reduced to order by the methods of sciencecarefully and persistently applied."[2] Further, the examination of those facts had convinced the deliverer of the address "that memory and affection are not limited to that association with matter by which alone they canmanifest themselves here and now, and that personality persists beyond bodily death." Nineteen hundred andfourteen proclaimed telepathy a "harmless toy," which, with necromancy, has taken the place[Pg 3] of "eschatology and the inculcation of a ferocious moral code." And yet it is on telepathy, if we are to believe thedaily papers, that Sir Oliver Lodge largely relies for his proofs. Here, at any rate, is a pleasing diversity of opinion which fully bears out what was said at the beginning of this paper. It is, however, with the thirdaddress, or rather pair of addresses, that we are concerned; for the meeting of 1914, not only was the first to beheld at the Antipodes, but also the first to be honoured with two addressesone in Melbourne, the other inSydney. The Project Gutenberg eBook of Science And Morals, by Sir Bertram C. A. Windle.CONTENTS3
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