Trout fishing by Hodgson W. Earl (William Earl) d. 1910

Author:Hodgson, W. Earl (William Earl), d. 1910
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Trout fishing, Trout, Weather
Publisher: London, A. & C. Black, ltd.
Published: 1920-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

which to us seem trivial, hut whether the nature of God or the Sum of Things is such as to render the occurrence of any irregularity possible.

"As to your next point, that recent discoveries have shown Science to he so fallible that reasonable doubts may he entertained of the validity of its general 'principles, I fear I must confess myself here even less in agreement with you than I a/m with regard to the matter about which I have just been speaking. I do not know if you saw Professor Case's letter to ' The Times,' in which he corrwnents on certain words used by Mr. Balfour at Cambridge to the effect that recent discoveries with rega/rd to electricity and electrons ha/oe ' explained away matter.' Professor Case, with whom here I entirely agree, — and so, I gather, do men of science generally, — denmmces such language as altogether misleading. Recent discoveries as to intra-atomic electrons do nothing, in my judgment, to alter our general conception of matter as such, except in so far as they illustrate

the cardinal doctrine of Materialism, that energy is a property of matter inhering in its very nature, and has not been added to it by the act of any outside Power.

" But these observations of mine are very hasty and incomplete; and I only make them, on the chance that you may see something in them, with which on refection you may yourself independently agree.

" I must, moreover, vnnd up with saying that the final conclusions to which your observations seem, to tend agree luith the conclusions which I m,yself believe the practical reason to demand. My only objection to your argumsnts is that they assert a conclusion without solving the theoretical difficulties involved, or recognising — what I myself believe to be the truth — that these a/re, within certain very definite limits, insoluble. This is what I have tried to indicate in ' The Veil of the Temple' discursively and informally; and I am preparing to deal again with the subject in a more formal manner. Still, everybody must see with his own eyes, and if you see

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clearly a new path of your own, I hope you will follow it out."

On reading this striking and most hind letter I perceived, with afiush asofsha/me, that the remarks as to the probable effects on philosophy of recent discoveries in Physical Science, remarlis made on pages 282 and 283, were not indubitably warrantable ; and I wrote making acknowledgment to that effect, but adding that if no break in the reign of natural law was to be deemed conceivable there would seem, to be neither Deity with the attributes commonly assumed nor moral responsibility in man. My friend answered thus : —

"/ think that — doubtless owing to my own way of expressing myself—you have misapprehended my general m,eaning. I have always maintained, and do maintain, that in order to give a/ay intelligible meaning to hwrna/n life in the concrete it is necessary to

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