Tarry thou till I come; or, Salathiel, the wandering Jew.Croly, George
General
Tarry thou till I come; or, Salathiel, the wandering Jew.
Croly, George
Wandering Jew -- Fiction
Once scientists among moles held a congress, and learnedly resolved that
they would believe in nothing that could not be submitted for proof to
their four senses. One learned mole with bated breath said: “There must
be something above our four senses. I one day broke through the crust
of the earth and felt strange sensations, and had a glimmering in the
rudiments called eyes by our older philosophers.” “Nonsense!” said a
grayhead among them. “Let us have no transcendentalism; everything that
is must be explained by sound, or by touch, or by smell, or by the taste.
All this talk of a great central sun with light, making landscapes and
from which all things come, we have no way of proving; and hence to
believe it, or to admit it as an element in accounting for things, is
unscientific. The scientific method, let us never forget, is to account
for all things by the elements which come within the range of our four
senses and the reasoning based upon these perceptions.”
So it happens that to this day in the cosmic science accepted among moles
the sun has nothing to do with the growth of plants, the formation of
coal-beds, and the rotation of the seasons.
* * * * *
How imperfect that history that would content itself with writing a
biography of the acorn, and never take into account the oak that comes
from the acorn and for which the acorn exists! The oak reveals the acorn;
without the oak the acorn is not explicable. How can any one understand
the evolution of man and not consider the vastly greater segment of his
nature, which is the non-material and spiritual? The scientist believes
in the indestructibility of matter. The step is a short one to the belief
in the indestructibility of spirit. He believes in substance infinitely
extended; the step is not a long one to belief in the personality that
is infinitely extended. He believes that in all matter is a “thinking
substance.” Is it harder to believe that over and in all things is a
thinking spirit?[I] The scientist endows matter with the powers it needs
to do all these things, and then says it does all these things.
Yet science, when it comes to know, when it comes to take in all the
facts, to go deep enough, and wide enough, and far enough, will be the
arbiter. Creed, dogma, authority, must give way to it. Magellan said:
“The Church declares the world is flat, but I have seen its shadow on
the moon, and I had rather believe a shadow than the Church.” That is
true only when the Church makes provision for but a part of the truth,
and when science is true to itself. The assumptions of science and the
assumptions of the Church will have to be corrected by _experience_, the
experience of the _whole_ man.
V
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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