THE VOICES OF NATURE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 736, 8 February 1910, Page 6

THE VOICES OF NATURE.

Mr. J. Arthur Thomson, Professor of Natural History, Aberdeen University, was - the Murtle lectarar at' Marischal College, Aberdeen, on ' November 28.. Principal; George Adam Smith presided. The' 1 subject,' of the" lecture was. "The .Three Voices of Nature." He said by this .he simply meant the impulses' thai came through the threefold relation between man and nature.- 1 In the first place; nature joined hands with' them and said, Struggle/ endeavour. She came close to them. They, could hear her heart beating, and she said, Wonder, enjoy, •revere. She whispered; secrets ,to them, they could almost catch her words. ■ She said, Search, inquire. ■ These were the three voices of nature,,appealing to hand •ind heart; and head—to the. trinity: 0 f our .being.' Natural science had to' do with the-process of. unwrapping the secrets of : nature.' If they would have for their human satisfaction;some -answer to the questions that lay beyond science, then : ' it must be a transcendental .answer, and that meant - for - most; of ■ them who preferred to', 'think naively a religious answer. There might be antagonism' be-' tween the religious mood and the scientiiic mood, just as there was between .tie artistic' mood and the scientific mood,hut there' 1 could not :be antagonism- between -a transcendental and a scientific formula. They -were incommensurables. Many were disappointed because scientific investigation gave no direct support ■'■ to religious convictions, -but that- snowed a .misunderstanding of 'what was meant by Bcience and by religion. Science reached conclusions which the religious mood might transfigure, but tbey could not by searching find out God. Was it not much that science disclosed, more and more fully, the intelligibility, the orderliness, and the progressiveness of nature? These were big intellectual assets.