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Historical truth contrasted with

phenomena. And even if future researches should shew that there is, or make it probable that there has been, an evolution of life from matter, the region of life will still remain clearly distinct. We have here to deal with the fullest development of phenomena and not with their inchoate stage. In the case of living bodies then all the observed laws of inorganic being hold good so far as these bodies can be considered simply as inorganic, but no further. All the laws which limit our observation hold good in the deductions which can be drawn from them. But life itself is an element wholly different in order from those with which we have dealt hitherto. The variety, the complexity, the cumulative transmission of its manifestations, render experiment and prediction for the most part nugatory. This is true both of the single life and of the sum of being. We cannot here, except in the broadest generalizations, assume permanence in the conditions of the problem: we cannot assume permanence in the mysterious energy of life itself: we cannot affect to leave out of consideration the interference of individual influences, which, from whatever source they spring, are at least incalculable. We find ourselves in the presence of a movement due to an immeasurable combination of concurrent or conflicting powers. It is a grand truth that the

Mathematical and Physical truth.

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dead rule the living,' but they rule them and they do no more. No despot however absolute could destroy the personality of his subjects.

The Truth of life then, Historical Truth, must be generically different in kind from Mathematical or Physical Truth. Historical Truth is concerned primarily with the reality of specific facts. Physical Truth is concerned primarily with the coordination of groups of facts. The basis of the one is testimony which is unique, the basis of the other is experiment which can be repeated. The particular incident is in the first case a fragment of a continuous growth, in the second it is an example of that which is for us an unchanging law. No doubt our conviction of Physical Truth and of Historical Truth agrees in this that in both cases the conviction admits of degrees of certainty, but the degrees depend upon wholly different conditions. The adequacy of the testimony is the measure of historical certainty: the adequacy of the experiments is the measure of physical certainty.

Here then we have a new science. The sphere is human life, the method is the investigation of the records of the past and present: the verification rests on testimony taken in connexion with

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the analogy of experience. I am not concerned to inquire why we are so constituted as to believe testimony any more than why we are so constituted as to accept a universal statement based upon a limited induction. What seems to be of chief importance is, that being what we are, we do and must accept as true facts which we cannot bring to the test of experiment, facts which by their very nature are incapable of repetition. It is simply impossible to apply to history the method or the test of physics: but certainty is equally attainable in both cases for the uses of human life, though it represents the result of different processes.

iii. I have touched upon what appear to be the characteristics of the different kinds of certainty corresponding respectively with the conclusions which flow from the limitations of our own nature, from our direct observation, according to these limitations of the inorganic world, and from the indirect record of the past experience of life. But there is yet another sphere of knowledge. The existence of the personal 'I' and of the external world are two self-luminous truths. And there is also a third, which rests, as we have seen, on the same foundation of consciousness, that is, the Being of GOD. In other words man stands in a present and abiding relationship with

our knowledge of GOD.

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an unseen and eternal as well as with a seen and temporal order. His individual life is directly connected with a vaster life which is its source, and the world on which he looks is part of a universe of being which is made known through it only partially, if really. Here then there is room for another type of Truth, for another method of inquiry, for another kind of certainty. We are brought to the threshold of a new science, the positive science of Theology, which like the other sciences must have its own appropriate facts. How then can we obtain these facts? How can we be assured that they are facts? we use them as the basis of further deductions

and generalisations?

How can

Before I attempt to answer these questions I must mark three laws which we have observed in our consideration of the mathematical, physical, and vital sciences. The first is, that the fundamental facts of each science and of each type of science are in themselves respectively independent of every other science and of every other type of science. We cannot, for instance, predict by the help of any deductions from the conceptions of time and space what will be the character of the solar system. The law of gravitation again cannot form the sufficient basis of

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General laws applicable to

the law of chemical combination or of laws of action. There may be an undiscovered unity, as there is certainly a marvellous harmony, between the different laws when they are approximately understood, but it is impossible to pass directly from one science to another. The attempt to do so would be an attempt on a greater or less scale to construct a world à priori.

The second law is, that in any complex phenomenon we can isolate by abstraction those elements which belong to the domain of a particular science, and then the law and method of the particular science will so far find a right and complete application to the phenomenon in question. For example, if the hand describes a curve under definite conditions, we may consider the figure only or the action of gravity upon the limb while describing it, both in vacuo and in a resisting medium of an assumed or of a determined character: or the internal changes in the living frame attendant upon the action: or the record of the movement given by a spectator. The problems which are thus raised are perfectly distinct and must be treated independently if we are to obtain a true conception of the whole action. Physiology is unable to fix the properties

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