Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1883-06-13
THE FAILURE or SCIENCE.
Il Scaihtag Criticism Of Gail Hamilton
[From the North American Reviewl

4 Scathiag Criticism or Gail Hamilton.
From the North American Review.l
Never again let this generation, at
least, hear one whimper from science
against religion. In the long warfare
rpiigion has often chosen her groun
with stupidity, selected her weap as
with ignorance, and welded her for> !,
With passionate feebleness; but she Ii
ar made SO pitiful q display and so fuila
II use of her resources as science made
over the death.bed of President Garfield
When the question is of nebule, of at
oms, of the rock growth and the earths
age, of the spirits substance, of lies
origin, of the infinite in space, the i'll
nceivable in time, the unknowahle IL
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 hfe 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 knowl-
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, alb
lutte, thorough, undisputed failure-fail-
ure SO minute and complete that only
its terrible gravity kept it from being
ridiculous, and not even it's 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 deeper soul. But
when science comes into practical
realm, where we can prove or disprove
her accuracy, her keenest scent for
truth, her finest touch of skill is to
grope till the man is dead and then find
the bullet in wash-bowl. Nescience
could do that. What avaiIed science to
Garfield? She never treated or touched
the wound which the bullet made and
which she was summoned tozheal.- 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 improbable. 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, I'M
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 were bored into-sometimes
with seven different catheters of differ
emit sizes at single dressing-and let
them feed the man as Garfield was fed,
and furnish him with the malarious air
that Garfield breathed, and sequester
him as Garfield was sequestered. 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 our hope of Immortality? You are
rs unable as the clown or the clod to
discover the secret of physical life. With
whatshadow of reason shall you presume
TO annihilate spiritual life because its Sc
arct eludes you? The coarsest fanatic
who can see God only on tipping
,able does not display SO monumental
fatulty as you, who can only touch NOR
atty with your elbows, and would alb
aegate Immortality because you cannot
clutch it in your fists. Cropping for
trath at the bottom of well you would
bot out the sun from the heavens, be-
cause you can only see the faint glimmer
Of the stars