The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1886-11-13
TRUTH is EXPANSIVE.

A Principle Which, IL RecognIsed, Would
Save Much Controversy between Science
and Religion.
All truth is expansive. The power
of all telegraphs and all telephones,
and whatever OF electrical Developments
the future may bring us, was in that
half-perceived truth which set Frank
Inns kite a-ilying; as the power of all
steam-engines was in the Marquis of
Worcester's steam-cha,nber and Watts
kettle. When Calico affirmed the
truth regarding the motion Of the
earth, he was unconsciously giving
laws to modern navigation-as New
tons discovery of the law of gravita-
tion gives scientific precision to modern
artillery. The discovery that the air
has weight may have seemed trivial
matter to most of the people of the
time; but that discovery was the parent
of the barometer-that valuable instru-
ment which enables lis to predict the
approach of great atm ospheric changes
and to prepare for them. Nor is it
alone in the discovery of new princi-
pies that the expansive power OF truth
appears. The most ordinary truth
which child is taught in the public
schools is capable OF a similar expan-
sion. When a boy has once grasped
the truth that two and two make four,
and always and necessarily make four,
he holds in his hand the key to all
mathematical equations, to all laws Of
logic, and to all necessary forms of
human thinking. Tho most compli-
Gated truths which the human mind is
capable of grasping arise chiefly from
the expansion and cOmbinati of the
simplest truths.
1t Is the failure to grasp this princi-
pie OF the expansion of truth which is
the fruitful parent of controversies.
Scientists have been ranged against
scientists, and theologians against
theologians, and scientists and thcolo-
gians against each other, through their
slowness to perceive that the ex-
truth If the boy were to come to his
childhood that God made the flower;
and now, instead of that, find that
the flower grows in the ordinary course
of nature; you told me a falsehood,"
he would be acting no less wisely than
many grave scientist, many rever-
end theologian. Can it not be held
with show of reason, and supported
by undeniable logical forms, that, if
plant grows, it is not made. and, if it
is made, it does not grow? And need
we wonder that the same bOyish rea-
soning prompts many foolish scientist
to deny the story of creation on the
basis of the facts Of geology. and many
an equally foolish divine to denounce
the facts Of geology on the basis of the
truth of creationP Both scientist and
theologian fail to perceive that the
story of the world according to the
geol0gists is only the physical render
ing of the same story which in the Bible
is presented in its creative and thauma-
turgiNal aspect; and they create con-
tradictions where in reality there is
simply difference in minuteness of
detail, on the one side or the other.
There is a practical value in this rec
Ognition of the expansion of truth;
for it makes surer our hold upon the
truth which we now possess. We do
not know into what richness of detail,
unperceived by us. that truth may un-
fold in the future; but we know that no
future can make untrue what is true
to-day. The world will undoubtedly
move into new icons of progress, and
the achievements of a century hence
may perhaps be such as would seem
almost miraculous to us to-day; but
that progress will be along the line Of the
expansion of truth, not along the line
of its contradiction. The world will
know more of mathematics century
hence, but the mathematical progress
OF the future will never make it less
certain that two and two make four.
We may hold. therefore, what truth
we now possess, with the glad assur-
ance that the future can never invali-
date it--that what we do not know,
never can overthrow what we DO now
Knows. s. Times.