sition in the
world. Both in a material and in an intellectual point of view it has
produced, and is designed to produce, immense changes--vast social
ameliorations, and vast alterations in the popular conception of the
origin, rule, and governance of natural things. By science, in the
physical world, miracles are wrought; while philosophy is forsaking its
ancient metaphysical channels and pursuing others which have been opened
or indicated by scientific research. This must become more and more the
case as philosophical writers become more deeply imbued with the methods
of science, better acquainted with the facts which scientific men have won
and with the great theories which they have elaborated.

If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour- and minute-hands,
and possibly also a second-hand, moving over the graduated dial. Why do
these hands move, and why are their relative motions such as they are
observed to be? These questions cannot be answered without opening the
watch, mastering its various parts, and ascertaining their relationship to
each other. When this is done, we find that the observed motion of the
hands follows of necessity from the inner mechanism of the watch, when
acted upon by the force invested in the spring.

The motion of the hands may be called a phenomenon of art, but the case is
similar with the phenomena of nature. These also have their inner
mechanism and their store of force to set that mechanism going. The
ultimate problem of physical science is to reveal this mechanism, to
discern this store, and to show that, from the combined action of both,
the phenomena of which they constitute the basis must of necessity flow.

I thought that an attempt to give you even a brief and sketchy
illustration of the manner in which scientific thinkers regard this
problem would not be uninteresting to you on the present occasion; more
especially as it will give me occasion to say a word or two on the
tendencies and limits of modern science; to point out the region which men
of science claim as their own, and where it is mere waste of time to
oppose their advance; and also to define, if possible, the bourne between
this and that other region to which the questionings and yearnings of the
scientific intellect are directed in vain.

But here your tolerance will be needed. It was the American Emerson, I
think, who said that it is hardly possible to state any truth strongly
without apparent injustice t