Daily globe., 1883-05-24
TIE FAILURE OF SCIENCE.
Il Scatttng Csitictsns dy G0iy Hamilton
(From the North American Reyiewl


Never again let this generation, at
least, hear one wbimper from science
against religion. III the long war:nre
religion has often chosen her ground
with stupidity, selected her weapons
with ignorance, and welded her lorces
with passionate fe3'leness; but she n..v-
er made so pitiful display aud so futile
use Of her resources as science made
over the death-bed of President Garfield.
When the question is of nebulm, of at
oms, of the rocks growth and the earth's
age, of the spirits substance, Of ife's
origin, of the infinite in space, the IL
conceivable in time, the unknowable in
eternity-science has it ali her own way.
We cannot bridge the chasm between
mind and matter. No man hath seen
God at any time to prove Him the Gre
ator. From the grave no being has
arisen to our eyes, and from the stars no
voice comes to our ears to dispute what
ever the wise men may say.
But here was solid ground for science
to stand on and demonstrate her power.
She had nothing to do with the remote,
with the past, with distractions. Before
her eyes, under her hand, lay human
soul in sore strata human life hunted
into the valley of the shadow of death,
longing to come out again into the sun
shine of the fair and open day. The
whole nation, the whole world shared in
the longing. Whatever love and wealth
could proffer was ready to the hand of
science. Everything that gratitude
could inspire, everything that ambition
could desire, lay in wait to reward the
man who should conduct the august
sufferer back through the gates of life.
And science accepted the trust man
fully. The most celebrated and the
most accomplished brought to that
darkened chamber their highest knowI-
edge with ever renewed and unwearying
effort. The railroad and the telegraph
were put under their control. No cost
hindered any experiment or curtailed
any care. The nation stood behind.
not only permitting, but urging every
expenditure of brains and money, to
the same end, urged their own self
interest, patriotism and humanity. Day
and night they ceased not to work and
watch, and the result was-failure, ab-
lutte, thorough, undisputed failure-fail-
ure SO minute and complete that only
its terrible gravity kept it from being
ridiculous, and not even its terrible
gravity could keep it from being gro
tesque.
Science can spin the world back be-
tween her thumb and finger billion
years, and we go spinning with it be-
cause we cannot help ourselves. Science
can locate the soul in the grayish mat
ter Of the brain, and we submit because
we cannot dig deeper than that grayish
matter to search for a deeper soul. But
when science comes into q practical
realm, where we can prove or disproye
her accuracy, her keenest scent fer
truth, her finest touch of skill is to
grope till the man is dead and then find
| the bullet in a wash-bowI. Nescience
could do that. What availed science to
Garfield? She never treated or touched
the wound which the bullet made and
which she was summoned to heal. She
never even found it. She made
two CHASTITY wounds herself, and for
eighty days she clawed at them. The
bullet which the surgeons could not
find nature carefully encysted. The
bullet-wound which they never touched
nature safely and silently healed.
Surgical science is reduced to the pit
iful claim that she alone kept Garfield
alive for eighty days. This is suicidal
self-relegation to the unprovable. Rout-
ed on the tangible field of fact, she fees
to the cloud-land Of speculation, and
again throws up intrenchments.
Nescience has precisely the same
right and the same reason to speculate
take man in perfect health, and give
him into the control of surgeons, IN
wounded, and let them make two such
wounds as Garfield suffered at his sur
geons' hands, and let them bore into
those wounds every day as Garfeld's
wounds we're bored into-sometimes
with seven different catheters Of differ
ent sizes at single dressing and les
them feed the man as Garfield was fed,
and furnish him with the malarious air
that Garfield breathed, and sequester
him as Garfield was seqgestered. and not
one man in 10000 would survive the
horror OF it for eighty days!
Savans, how dare you, in your limit
less ignorance and impotence, tamper
With or hope of Immortality? You are
as unable as the clown or the clod to
!. - r