. Richard Henry Dana, jr. ... speeches in stirring times, and letters to a son . iend andformer partner, Mr. Francis E. Parker,! have hearddiscoursing on modern philosophy with my philosophy, however, which seemed to militateagainst Christianity was read with a critical eye, notbecause he closed his mind to truth, but because hequeried whether every new philosophy, however plaus-ible or convincing it might seem, was in reality thetruth. As he said to me, in substance, one generation ordecade has been carried away with a system that thenext modifies or refutes altogether. Even in nat
. Richard Henry Dana, jr. ... speeches in stirring times, and letters to a son . iend andformer partner, Mr. Francis E. Parker,! have hearddiscoursing on modern philosophy with my philosophy, however, which seemed to militateagainst Christianity was read with a critical eye, notbecause he closed his mind to truth, but because hequeried whether every new philosophy, however plaus-ible or convincing it might seem, was in reality thetruth. As he said to me, in substance, one generation ordecade has been carried away with a system that thenext modifies or refutes altogether. Even in nature,what the scientist recently ridiculed as impossibleis the commonplace of to-day. He quoted ProfessorCooke as saying he had had to change his fundamentalideas of chemistry some twenty times. He believedthere were mysteries behind the phenomena of na-ture not dreamed of by the physicists. If, for exam-ple, matter is but centres of force, then, said he,matter is non-material, as we think of the material, ^ He writes in his journal of going out of town to hear ^^^z ^- r, av 🅱.9 INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 21 and comes pretty near being the creation of an om-nipotent spiritual will. This view of centres offorce is coming prominently forward again, and weare told the marvelous power of these forces is some-thing almost beyond belief. We do not know what alaw of nature is. The usual definition, an observedsequence of phenomena, explains nothing. SomeGerman philosophers, he remarked, doubted the uni-versality of the laws of time and space. Our reasoningon infinity brings us to contradictions. He believedColeridges idea, that human reason is limited perhapswholly to the scope of its experience. If, even in theregion of experience, Mr. Dana added, it cannot ex-plain such familiar things as matter, or the laws ofnature, oreven what electricity is, or chemical affinity,how can the human mind be trusted,then, in its theoriesof the great cause of all, of the supernatural and
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