ROMANCE OF SCIENCE.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 27 November 1914, Page 3

ROMANCE OF SCIENCE.

-*. . v fc Dr. ; Alfred Russel Wallace, who <j has passed away in . his ninety-first n year, was the last survivor of the p brilliant band of scientists whose a labours stamped the character of the nineteenth century. In, spite of jfi his literary industry, which ranged j g from Socialism to Spiritualism, ~ from theories of social . Veconstruc- t tion to theories of the universe t which came perilously near tr"> sane- t tioning the geocentric beliefs that v cabined and confined the mediaeval n mind, Dr. Wallace belonged, by vir- k tue of,, his contribution to the doc- p trine of evolution, to the last cen- s tury rather than to this. His title c to share with Darwin the glory and j] renown of the most distinctive achievement of modern times is -indisputable, even if it. be 'concerted that Darwin's laborious inductions would have carried conviction and revolutionised scientific thought if "^Wallace had never been visited by the flash of intuition, .-which in an instant resolved his difficulties and questionings in an all-sufficing formula. The story of Wallace's (_' discovery discloses one of the marvels of coincidence. To the young naturalist lying ill in the Moluccas there suddenly came the thought s that the key to the mysteries oi » species lay in the doctrine of the b survival of the fittest. He develop- t ed his ideas, wrote them .down, and despatched the manuscript to Dare win. "I never saw a more strik- I ing coincidence, "Darwin" wrote to o Ly.ell. ' "If Wallace had my manu- i script sketch, written out in 1842, b he could not have made a better 9hort abstract. Even his terms t now stand as heads of my chap- n ters." This was in ISSS. -,In the following year came the epoch-mak- c ing "Origin of Species." while in < 1871 Wallace published his "Con- a tributions to the Theory of Natural 0 Selection," a work which did per- ij haps more than any other to popularise and establish the doctrines oi j evolution. n A HARD FIGHT. The idea of cosmic evolution is as r old as human speculation, but, ( like all great thoughts, it had to v grope its way through mazes of n theory until it merged into the c lucidity of scientific expression. Hints of it are to be found in the s cosmic system which the martyred j t Giordano Bruno based on the doc- v trines of; Copernicus. The eighteenth i century trod more firmly towards a. v more visible goal as research threw increasing light on the structure of t the universe, and in the first two 1 decades of the nineteenth century, t by. which tjme Lamarck had for- 1 mul'ated his conceptions and Wil- < liam Charles Wells had even anticipated the phrase "the survival of r the fittest," the scientific world wa's c approximating very closely to a 1 standpoint involving a surrender of t the theological attitude. An inter- \ esting product of the pre-Darwinian i period was Robert Chambers's t "Vestiges of Creation." Jt was published anonymously, for obvious 1 reasons which in' no way detract t from the credit due to Chambers ' for his elaboration of the evolu- \ tionary creed, and, it helped to pre- t pare the way for what was to t come. .And in the fulness of the t time came Darwin, no longer conjee- ' Luring and theorising, but laying ■ broad and strong on a base of as- ( cectained fact the doctrine of na- I tural selection to which nowadays i we are all converts. In the dif- s ferent atmosphere of to-day it is difficult to realise how strenuously this conception of a- great truth —of "the one Spirit's plastic stress . . . compelling all new successions to the forms they wear" by ; the irresistible sweep 'of unchanging laws—had to fight against the forces of tradition and ignorance. From , every citadel of obscurantism ban- ( ners flew defiantly and missiles were ] fired at the patient student of Na- , ture who had flared to lay an ob- , literating fmge~r on the Mosaic cos- , raogony and ventured to as.sert the kinship of all living things. It is perhaps even now somewhat humiliating to remember how little separated the middle of the nineteenth century in spirit from the . age in which Giordano Bruno was burnt alve and Galileo was forced to abjure his scientific discoveries. SCIENCE AND RELIGION. The world progresses by renouncing its errors. The renaissance would have been impossible if men had continued to believe that the earth was the centre of the universe, and modern civilisation would be a stunted growth if the doctrine of evolution had not arrive! to shatter illusions, to deliver the intellect from crushing limitations, and to give humanity a grander conception of the scale of creation and the continuity of the divine purpose. The question whether the reconciliation of science and religion can be effected, which used to occupy much of the attention of theologians, is not nearly so prominent now, because it is recognised that between science and religion there cannot be any such quarrel as that postulated by the defenders of traditional opinions. Science is not the enemy of religion. If it comes into conflict with certain dogmas challengeable as contradictions of ascertained truth, so* much the worse for doctrines. '*i"iuv must go. Their formal abandonment may be left to a distant day, when the Churches are bold enough to confront a world of change ntvl re- ; state their fmrlamer:tal po-ition. j But in the meantime, while the docu- | ments of religion are being silently ' rendered obsolete, relicicm itself will

shine the clearer for the new vision which science affords it of a uni-

verso drawing on. an invisible power for the processes ,f its illimitable development, and for a conception of human destiny rising on stepping stones of dead things. We are all debtors to Darwin and Wallace —the religious for emancipation from errors and terrors which scourged humanity, the statesman and politician for lessons of patience in the application of theory to practice, the social reformer for hope in the often depressing work he has undertaken, and the scientist for the new worlds which swam into his ken when the principle of ordered progression made it possible to sweep into oblivion all catastrophe explanations of the world we live in.