The Sword of Song

SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 119 and it will go hard with us if we do not !) regard all progress in any direction as morbid. So (as with Lombroso) “disease” will become a m ere word, like its prede- cessor “infidelity,” and cease to carry any obloquy. If Science is never to go bey ond its present lim its; if the barriers which m eta- physical speculation shows to exist are never to be trans cended, then indeed we are thrown back on faith, and all the rest of the nauseous mess of medieval superstition, and we may just as well have vital principle and creative power as not, for Science cannot help us. True, if we do not use all the methods at our disposal! But we go bey ond. We admit that all mental methods known are singularly liable to illusion and inaccuracy of any sort. So were the early determ inations of s pecific heat. Even biologists have erred. But to the true scientist every failure is a stepping- stone to s uccess; every m istake is the key to a new truth. And the history of our Science is the history of all Science. If y ou choose to ape Christendom and put the pioneers of rational investigation into the nature of consciousness on the rack ( i.e. into lunatic asylums) I doubt not we shall find our Bruno. But it will add an additional pang that persecution should come from the house of our friends. Let us , however, turn away from the aspect of criticism which an accidentla controversy has thus caused me to notice, and so to anticipate the obvious line of attack which the more frivolous ty pe of critic will employ, and return to our proper business, the summary of our own position with regard to Buddhism. Buddhism is a logical development of the observed facts; whoso is with me so far is Sammaditthi, and has taken the first step on the Noble Eightfold Path. Let him aspire to knowledge, and the Second Step is under his feet. The rest lies with Research. Aum ! I take my refuge holy in the Light and Peace of Buddh. Aum ! I take my refuge, slowly working out His Law of Good. Aum ! I take my refuge lowly in His Pitying Brotherhood.