of Ireland, and strengthening
gradually to the perfect day, as a surer check to any intellectual or
spiritual tyranny which may threaten this island, than the laws of
princes or the swords of emperors. We fought and won our battle even
in the Middle Ages: should we doubt the issue of another conflict with
our broken foe?

The impregnable position of science may be described in a few words.
We claim, and we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of
cosmological theory. All schemes and systems which thus infringe upon
the domain of science must, in so far as they do this, submit to its
control, and relinquish all thought of controlling it. Acting
otherwise proved always disastrous in the past, and it is simply
fatuous to-day. Every system which would escape the fate of an
organism too rigid to adjust itself to its environment, must be
plastic to the extent that the growth of knowledge demands. When
'this truth has been thoroughly taken in, rigidity will be relaxed,
exclusiveness diminished, things now deemed essential will be dropped,
and elements now rejected will be assimilated. The lifting of the
life is the essential point; and as long as dogmatism, fanaticism, and
intolerance are kept out, various modes of leverage may be employed to
raise life to a higher level.

Science itself not unfrequently derives motive power from an
ultra-scientific source. Some of its greatest discoveries have been
made under the stimulus of a non-scientific ideal. This was the case
among the ancients, and it has been so amongst ourselves. Mayer,
Joule, and Colding, whose names are associated with the greatest of
modern generalisations, were thus influenced. With his usual insight,
Lange at one place remarks, that 'it is not always the objectively
correct and intelligible that helps man most, or leads most quickly to
the fullest and truest knowledge. As the sliding body upon the
brachystochrone reaches its end sooner than by the straighter road of
the inclined plane, so, through the swing of the ideal, we often
arrive at the naked truth more rapidly than by the processes of the
understanding.' Whewell speaks of enthusiasm of temper as a hindrance
to science; but he means the enthusiasm of weak heads. There is a
strong and resolute enthusiasm in which science finds an ally; and it
is to the lowering of this fire, rather than to the diminution of
intellectual insight, that the lessening productiveness of men of
science, i