United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Women -- Social conditions -- Fiction
"Provided you could reply upon the moderation of the teachers; for
unless wisely and temperately inculcated, this system would soon make
utter shipwreck of the noblest interests of humanity. For many years
I have watched attentively the doublings of this fox, and while I
yield to no man in solemn fidelity to truth, I want to be sure that
what I accept as such, is not merely old error under new garbs, only
a change of disguising terms. Science has its fetich, as well has
superstition, and abstruse terminology does not always conceal its
stolid gross proportions. The complete overthrow and annihilation of
the belief in a personal, governing, prayer-answering God, is the end
and aim of the gathering cohorts of science, and the sooner masking
technicalities are thrown aside the better for all parties.
Scientific research and analysis, nobly brave, patient, tireless, and
worthy of all honour and gratitude, have manipulated, decomposed, and
then integrated the universal clay, but despite microscope and
telescope, chemical analysis, and vivisection, they can go no further
than the whirring of the Potter's wheel, and the Potter is nowhere
revealed. The moulding Creative hand and the plastic clay are still
as distinct, as when the gauntlet was first flung down by proud
ambitious constructive science. Animal and vegetable organisms have
been analyzed, and 'the idea of adaptation developed into the
conception that life itself, "is the definite combination of
heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive in
correspondence with external co-existence and sequences."' Now to the
masses who are pardonably curious concerning this problem of
existence, is this result perfectly satisfactory? The 'Physical basis
of life' has been driven into a corner, hunted down, seized at last,
and over the heads of an eager, panting, chasing generation, is
triumphantly dangled this 'Scientific Fox' brush, 'Nucleated
Protoplasm, the structural unit!' But how or whence sprang the laws
of 'Protein'? Hatred of certain phrases is more bitter than of the
principles they express, and because theologians cling to the words
God,' Creative Acts, Divine Wisdom, Providential Adaptation,
scientists declare them the _dicta_ of ignorance, superstition, and
tradition, and demand that we shall bow before their superior wisdom,
and substitute such terms as 'Biogenesis,' 'Abiogenesis,' and
'Xenogenesis.' But where is the economy of credulity? The problems
are only crowded by a subtle veil of learned or scientific verbiage,
and their solution does not induce the expenditure of faith. The
change of names is not worth the strife, for the Clay and the Potter
are still distinct, and He who created cosmic laws cannot reasonably
or satisfactorily be confounded with, or merged in His own statutes.
Creeds, theories, systems are not valuable because they are religious
and traditional, or because they are scientific or philosophical, but
solely on account of their truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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