Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 159

Chap.

§46.

II]

FAITH

135

once he read without glasses. Technical skill is called into accuracy also play in the use of the microscojDe and a ;

;

what one obthe department in which

certain inventive instinct in the statement of serves.

Scientific

knowledge

of

one observes will also be a requisite. All this, however, does not deny that the observation itself bears no scientific character, and that the scientific task of the observer only begins

when

the result of the observation has been obtained.

farmer who, in his stables and

phenomena

fields,

same function To perceive is the com-

of nature, exercises virtually the

as the observer in his laboratory.

mon

The

observes the data and

function of man, and perception in a full-grown

man

is

not scientific study because an adult perceives more and He who has a sharp and penetrating better than a child. eye sees

all sorts of

not see, but

who

things which a

common

observer does

has ever thought of calling the observation

man

scientific? If then the observer in with the reinforced eye what would not reveal itself in any other way, how can this put the stamp of If suddenly our eye should be so science on his labor? greatly strengthened as to equal the microscope in power of vision, then every one would see what he sees. His advantage consists simply in this, that his eye is reinforced. Reinforced in the same way as the eye of the pilot on the bridge of a ship is reinforced, so that he discovers the approach of a coming ship at a great distance. Reinforced in the same way as the eye of the Alpine huntsman, who through the spy-glass discovers from afar the wild goat on the glacier. Only with a difference of degree. But how can this

of a sharp-seeing

his laboratory sees

difference of degree in the reinforcement of vision ever lend

a scientific character to

work

in the laboratory,

ever grants to a sea-captain or chamois-hunter

?

which no one Grant there-

fore that the preparation of the chemist is scientific, that his

that presently he will go to work sciwith what has been observed. Very well, if only you concede that his observation as such lacks all scientific character, and that a chemist who confined himself to observation would not be prosecuting science at all. All certainty

purpose

lies in science,

entifically

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