What is Truth? [pp. 506-535]

1877.] 1l'V/zat is Truth? 531
mental and primary of them all, while incapable of explanation in terms, may still be elucidated by concrete examples.
And hererein was the power of Jesus Christ as a teacher preeminent above all others, by raising from the dead and rehabilitating the ideas of virtue, which before were thoroughly
comprehended and possessed by all, but had lost their vital
power. This he did constantly, illustrating abstract truth by
parables, and actualizing it in his life.
It is further claimed that there must be a radical difference
in the nature of proof which the moral and physical sciences
furnish, because of the opposite fortunes which they exhibit.
It is said that not only the first principles of scientific truth
are unquestioned, but that a grand system of matured results
have for ages defied doubt; while, on the other hand, all
questions of moral and intellectual philosophy are still open
and subject to frequent controversy. It is astonishing to hear
it maintained that the first principles of science are so well
settled and clear that there can be no question about them,
when this assertion is in the face of undoubted history. For
example: The constituents of many metals which have been
long known are each, suigeneris, and have the same structure,
hardness, weight, and other properties. They can be mixed,
separated, changed in form, but the identity of each ultimate
particle remains the same in all these mutations. It was conceded that no one of these substances could be made without
uniting their constituent parts in their due proportions. Yet,
in defiance of all established laws of chemistry, the foremost
scientific men of the middle ages, and almost to our own time
wearied themselves in the fruitless search after some substance,
which, by its mere touch, would transmute the base metals
into gold. So again: No physical truth seems more obvious
than that no power can be generated by the multiplication of machinery, and that action and reaction are equal.
But the world still abounds in visionaries, the lineal descendants of those who gave their lives to the attempt to invent
perpetual motion. It is further accepted as a fundamental
maxim that, es nihilo nihilfit, or that every effect must have
an adequate cause. But, to escape from the necessity ofadmitting a Creator, such as common sense, as well as revelation, declares to be a necessary condition of the existence of a