which she will assuredly make good her claim.

I have been reminded that an eminent predecessor of mine in the
Presidential chair, expressed a totally different view of the Cause of
things from that enunciated by me. In doing so he transgressed the
bounds of science at least as much as I did; but nobody raised an
outcry against him. The freedom he took I claim. And looking at what
I must regard as the extravagances of the religious world; at the very
inadequate and foolish notions concerning this universe which are
entertained by the majority of our authorised religious teachers; at
the waste of energy on the part of good men over things unworthy, if I
may say it without discourtesy, of the attention of enlightened
heathens; the fight about the fripperies of Ritualism, and the verbal
quibbles of the Athanasian Creed; the forcing on the public view of
Pontigny Pilgrimages; the dating of historic epochs from the
definition of the Immaculate Conception; the proclamation of the
Divine Glories of the Sacred Heart--standing in the midst of these
chimeras, which astound all thinking men, it did not appear to me
extravagant to claim the public tolerance for an hour and a half, for
the statement of more reasonable views--views more in accordance with
the verities which science has brought to light, and which many weary
souls would, I thought, welcome with gratification and relief.

But to come to closer quarters. The expression to which the most
violent exception has been taken is this: 'Abandoning all disguise,
the confession I feel bound to make before you is, that I prolong the
vision backward across the boundary of the experimental evidence, and
discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance, and notwithstanding
our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with
opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and quality of
life.' To call it a 'chorus of dissent,' as my Catholic critic does,
is a mild way of describing the storm of opprobrium with which this
statement has been assailed. But the first blast of passion being
past, I hope I may again ask my opponents to consent to reason. First
of all, I am blamed for crossing the boundary of the experimental
evidence. This, I reply, is the habitual action of the scientific
mind--at least of that portion of it which applies itself to physical
investigation. Our theories of light, heat, magnetism, and
electricity, all imply the crossing of this b