E. A. Washburn

“ It is not probable that all our discoveries of the ape period will kindle our interest so much as the history we remember far better of the struggles and divine triumphs of the full-grown man. Let Science go on with its keenest analysis. It will return, when it is completed, to the living synthesis. If, with all our processes, we cannot manufacture a man, if even the mineral water we concoct is not quite the same as Nature brews in her laboratory, much more shall we give up the fruitless task of dissolving the ultimate facts of mind and life. ”

“ I AM glad of the privilege, gentlemen of the Medical College, of meeting to-day so many who are masters and students in the school of science. For if, as I believe, all our studies, whether of Nature or mind, are only chapters of one book, there can be nothing wiser in our day, when the growing mass of learning almost compels a microscopic research and somewhat of a microscopic bias—nothing wiser than at times to interchange our points of view. ”

“ But, as we have thus recognized this law of method as the fruit of our culture, we shall be able to see the interdependence of all these branches of knowledge. All our gains are helpful to each other. I might sum the vast history of science in a word—that it has taught us the harmony of law, not only in the correlation of natural forces, but of the moral and social forces of human life. ”

“ The clergyman has to learn fully that the Word of God is to be studied as the oracle of the great truths of man's spiritual history, not rashly made the rule of exact science. The naturalist must learn that there are facts of conscience and of human life more sacred than the guesses of his theory, which he must touch with reverent hands. ”

“ And when I sum, again, our results as to the human organism, all our knowledge of the fitness of the cerebral mass and each fibre of the spinal net-work to the motions of the unseen life, so far from proving thought a function of the brain, or will a shock of the nerve-power, has only refined the body into the perfect vehicle of the indwelling spirit. ”

“ It is the same with social science. And although I am aware of the notion of many doctors, both of divinity and medicine, that theology is a fixed deposit, as distinct from inductive knowledge, and indeed that there is an eternal conflict of religion and science, yet I am bold to say that it is a vulgar error. There is a more palpable movement in the science of Nature, because it has to do with material forces, while the theologian explores the more subtile laws of thought and moral history. We do not deal with scalpel or microscope, yet we recognize the method of analysis. ”

“ Let such experience teach us the honest pursuit of science, but teach us also its limit. Our age will gather up the real gains of its knowledge. We shall have learned many of the laws of our being; we shall apply ourselves to a broader culture of the mind ”

“ Nor can I ever admit that the great thinkers of the past have not done immeasurable service in their spheres of knowledge; rather, I claim that there is not a single foundation truth, in regard to the mind or moral nature, which was not known, even before a Plato or an Augustine. Our philosophy does not give essential truth ”

“ If you so pursue it, as honest interpreters of Nature and reverent worshipers of Him who is above Nature, you will make it a sacred ministry for not only physical knowledge, but for the service of God and man. ”

“ Spencer, gives us as the outcome of his analysis, that when we talk of material or spiritual substances, it is indifferent whether "we express those in terms of these, or these of those;" yet, as thought cannot be dissected like the gray matter of the brain, it is sounder science to say that the living force is another than the physical fact. ”

“ It is not too much to say that our theories of social and religious culture have been far too often affected by a partial view of our spiritual nature, which lost sight of its dependence on the body and the healthy laws of action. ”

“ The central truths of Christianity are always the same; but Biblical criticism, the comparative study of Hebrew or Christian epochs, the domain of doctrinal thought, are growths of the human mind, and every advance has been the fruit of experimental searching. ”

“ If evolution, whatever its amazing chain of growth, is forced to admit that the principal world-stuff has in it the capacity of all the thinking, conscious, moral being begotten from it, evolution is but a vague name for the living action of a living God. ”

“ If I can point out a few of the common features which give a meeting-ground with you for one who is, like myself, a physician of the soul—for studies that bear on the riddles of our mental life and the largest aims of moral education—my essay will not he thrown away. ”

“ But this method is not confined to the interpretation of Nature; it is the common law of advance in all knowledge. Mental science must now begin with the related facts of biology and psychology, in order to rise by clear analysis to the laws of thought or will. ”

“ And if we have some clergymen as guiltless of modern ideas as the Englishman who moved the risibles of a scientific circle by claiming that the fossils of the caves were the bones of the rebel angels, possibly you may have a few doctors of medicine almost unable to appreciate the scientific criticism of the four Gospels. ”

“ Huxley would take an excursion into the fields of Christian history, we should have better clerical sermons, and better "lay sermons." Science will work its own cure at last. It is not probable that there will be less prayer on account of Mr. ”