Law in the other senses the author notes, and has written his work, in part at least, to elucidate and defend, in so far as the natural or inductive sciences, without theology or philosophy, that is, so called metaphysics, can go, is not law at all, but a mere fact, or classification of facts, and simply marks the order of coexistence or of succession of the various facts and phenomena of the natural world. The so-called law of gravitation states to the physicist simply an order or series of facts, not the cause or force producing them, as Hume. Kant, the Positivists, J. Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and virtually even Sir William Hamilton, and his disciple Mr. Mansel, who exclude the ontological element from science, have amply proved. The idea of cause, of force, is not an empirical idea, but is given à priori.
There are several other points in the work before us on which we intended to comment, but we are obliged by our diminishing space to pass them over. The author says many true and important things, and says them well too; but we think in his effort to reconcile theology and science he fails, in consequence of being not so well versed in theology as he is in the sciences. He does not take note of the fact that the sciences are special, and deal only with facts of a secondary order, and are, therefore, incomplete without the science of the first cause, or theology. He does not keep sufficiently before his mind the distinction between God, as first cause, and nature, as second cause; and hence when he asserts the divine action he inclines to pantheism, and when he asserts the action of nature he inclines to naturalism. Yet his aim has been good, and we feel assured that he has wished to serve the cause of religion as well as that of science.
For ourselves, we hold, and have heretofore proved, that theology is the queen of the sciences, scientia scientiarum, but we have a profound regard for the men of real science, and should be sorry to be found warring against them. There is nothing established by any of the sciences that conflicts with our theology, which is that of the Church of Christ; and we have remarked that the quarrels between the savans and the theologians are, for the most part, not quarrels between science and theology, but between different schools of science. The professors of natural science, who had long taught the geocentric theory, and associated it with their faith, when Galileo brought forward the heliocentric theory, opposed it, and found it easier to denounce him as a heretic than to refute him scientifically. A quarrel arose, and the church was appealed to, and, for the sake of peace, she imposed silence on Galileo, which she might well do, since his theory was not received in the schools, and was not then scientifically established; and when he broke silence against orders, she slightly punished him. But the dispute really turned on a purely scientific question, and faith was by no means necessarily implicated, for faith can adjust itself to either theory. Men of science oppose the supernatural not because they have any scientific facts that militate against it, but because it appears to militate against the theory of the fixedness of natural laws, or of the order of nature. The quarrel is really between a heterodox theology, or erroneous interpretation of the supernatural on the one side, and the misinterpretation of the natural order on the other, that is, between two opinions. A reference to orthodox theology would soon settle the dispute, by showing that neither militates against the other, when both are rightly understood. There is no conflict between theology, as taught by the church, and anything that science has really established with regard to the order of nature.
We cannot accept all the theories of the noble duke, but we can accept all the scientific facts he adduces, and find ourselves instructed and edified by them. It is time the quarrel between theologians and savans should end. It is of recent origin. Till the revival of letters in the fifteenth century, there was no such quarrel—not that men did not begin to think till then, or were ignorant till then of the true method of studying nature—and there need be none, and would be none now, if the theologians never added or substituted for the teaching of revelation unauthorized speculations of their own, and if the savans would never put forward, as science, what is not science. The blame, we are willing to admit, has not been all on one side. Theologians in their zeal have cried out against scientific theories before ascertaining whether they really do or do not conflict with faith, and savans have too often concluded their scientific discoveries conflict with faith, and therefore said, Let faith go, before ascertaining whether they do so or not. There should, for the sake of truth, be a better mutual understanding, for both may work together in harmony.
"Beati Mites, Quoniam Ipsi
Possidebunt Terram."
Thy song is not the song of morn,
O Thrush! but calmer and more strong,
While sunset woods around thee burn,
And fire-touched stems resound thy song.
O songstress of the thorn, whereon
As yet the white but streaks the green,
Sing on! sing on! Thou sing'st as one
That sings of what his eyes have seen.
In thee some Seraph's rapture tells
Of things thou know'st not! Heaven draws near:
I hear the Immortal City's bells:
The triumph of the blest I hear.
The whole wide earth, to God heart-bare,
Basks like some happy Umbrian vale
By Francis trodden and by Clare,
When anthems sweetened every gale.
When greatness thirsted to be good,
When faith was meek, and love was brave,
When hope by every cradle stood,
And rainbows spanned each new-made grave.
Aubrey De Vere.