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exercise a salutary influence in preventing the creation in his mind of idols at whose shrines he might otherwise be inclined to do fetish worship.

This setting up of unauthenticated opinions as certainly true is very easy when one has no court of appeal to which these opinions are ever summoned to appear.

"When men have once acquiesced in untrue opinions," says Hobbes, "and registered them as authenticated records in their minds, it is no less impossible to speak intelligibly to such men than to write legibly on a paper already scribbled over.

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But while I hold that the study of science checks the setting up of false gods, I claim for it that it also substitutes true knowledge in the place of the false-we can scarcely do without our eidolon; only it must be carefully put together. "Does not the black African," asks Carlyle, "take of sticks and old clothes (say, exported Monmouthstreet cast clothes) what will suffice, and of these, cunningly combining them, fabricate for himself an eidolon (Idol or Thing Seen), and name it Mumbo-Jumbo,which he can thenceforth pray to, with upturned awestruck eye, not without hope? The white European mocks, but ought rather to consider, and see whether he, at home, could not do the like a little more wisely."

The study of science teaches us to reserve our judgment because of the complexity of the questions presented by nature; but it also teaches humility in presence of the vast and complex pictorial me

chanism.

To describe at any length the true reverence of knowledge as opposed to the mock reverence of ignorance, would occupy too large a space; and, as I have elsewhere dealt with this subject in some

detail, I shall proceed to consider the last point in which I have affirmed that a study of science exerts an improving educational influence, viz. in that it teaches the student to appreciate small differences between phenomena, and at the same time to trace resemblances between apparently widelyseparated facts.

The history of the development of any branch of science might almost be described as the history of the successive recognitions of small differences and unlooked-for resemblances between the particular class of facts with which the science deals.

In chemistry it has been preeminently thus. Chemical and physical phenomena were not always differentiated; it is only in quite recent times that the chemical lecturer has ceased to prelude his chemistry course by an account of the laws of heat, light, and electricity. We cannot yet exactly define "chemical compounds," as distinguished from "mechanical

mixtures." Substances now known to be altogether different, e.g. lime and magnesia, were long regarded as identical. The history of such a term as alkali is the history of a word which was once applied promiscuously to about as many different bodies as it contained letters, but which has gradually become more definite, and has consequently been applied to fewer and fewer substances.

But science also furnishes us with innumerable examples of the detection of resemblances which

were long overlooked. In one

direction science has tended to narrow the meaning of her terms, because she has detected differences between apparently identical phenomena; but she has never carried this demarcation of phenomena to the point at which each is defined, to use Wordsworth's expression,

"into absolute independent single- yet nothing defined into absolute

ness."

When we become too anxious to detect differences, Nature checks us by suddenly revealing resemblances where we had supposed that none existed.

I have said that in chemistry we have learned to distinguish chemical from mechanical action, we have ceased to confuse compound with mixture, we have differentiated atom from molecule; but we have done this, we are doing this, by recognising that mechanical and chemical, that compound and mixture, that atom and molecule, are but the terminal points of a series of phenomena, or substances, which are connected each with each by almost insensible gradations.

In science we have, I think, given up the system of classification in which certain substances, phenomena, or living things are arranged in linear series, each member of each series dependent only on the preceding and the succeeding member; and we have adopted what is sometimes called the classification by families and tribes, each individual dependent on all the others of the family, but more dependent on certain members than on certain others, the family dependent, and also helpful to, the tribe, particular families being more closely connected than others, and the tribes all working harmoniously as a

nation.

I must quote Wordsworth again, he being a poet has expressed in a sentence what many scientists might take books to render vague. "In nature everything is distinct,

independent singleness."

These advantages which I have claimed for the study of natural science, if gained at all, can only be gained by the study of science; it all depends on whether the science is the true thing, or an imitation. To repeat facts, to learn systems of classification, even to amass facts oneself, that is not science. These must be done, but the true work lies beyond and above all these.

The highest educational advantages of science, it appears to me, can only be reaped by the man who, duly trained in the knowledge of nature gained by others, embarks on the sea of the unknown for himself.

In original research alone do we begin to be true scientific naturalists.

In the University to which I have the honour to belong, natural science is beginning to be recognised as an instrument of education; but does the University as a body recognise the value of original research in science?

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CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

NEW SERIES.-No. 28.

THE BISHOP OF MANCHESTER.

THERE is much suggestiveness in the metaphorical and cynical motto with which Victor Hugo adorned the wall of the home he had made a few years ago in Guernsey. "Cross of Gold," ran the carven words, "Bishop of Wood; Cross of Wood, Bishop of Gold." The "high and dry" days of the prince-bishops, with cross and mitre of gold, are passed away; no more does the haughtiest prelate deem of outvying in worldly pomp, power, and magnificence the state of the richest prince or political potentate. As a worldly power the English Church has lost ground. Noting this fact, and that more deplorable fact also, that it is lagging behind in the keen strife of thought opened out by modern culture, some have begun to speculate and wonder whether the mission of the Church were not imperceptibly passing away from it.

In the very breach made in the influence of the Church by doubts such as these, the Bishop of Manchester has stood. He did not seek the position; but, once placed in it, he has shown that he could hold it.

The secret of his success we take to reside in the following particulars: By showing his little care for worldly advantages, and, indeed, rather a decided preference for simplicity of life, he has disarmed the suspicions of the inhabitants of a county noted for its matterof-fact radicalism, its rude scorn of compromise, and its inability to appreciate the convenances of aristocratic feudalism-humility before superiors, and blind respect for rank.

In a community where party and sectarian feeling run high, and flow with bitterness, he has kept himself free from the moil of partisan conflict, by devoting his attention to his part in the larger battle with ignorance and vice. He has not shown himself eager after the measure of the mint, anise, and cummin of the Church's prerogative, but, with no slackening of respect for the institution, he has flung himself into work about which no possible question could arise to a reasonable mind. He has been munificent of labour, thinking broadly of good

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