The authority of science, which is recognized by most philosophers of the modern epoch, is a very different thing from the authority of the Church, since it is intellectual, not governmental. No penalties fall upon those who reject it; no prudential arguments influence those who accept it. It prevails solely by its intrinsic appeal to reason. It is, moreover, a piecemeal and partial authority; it does not, like the body of Catholic dogma, lay down a complete system, covering human morality, human hopes, and the past and future history of the universe. It pronounces only on whatever, at the time, appears to have been scientifically ascertained, which is a small island in an ocean of nescience (非科学). There is yet another difference from ecclesiastical authority, which declares its pronouncements to be absolutely certain and eternally unalterable; the pronouncements of science are made tentatively on a basis of probability, and are regarded as liable to modification. This produces a temper of mind very different from that of the medieval dogmatist.