8 UTILITARIAN SCIENCES 



The existence of each cult of priests is bound up in the perpetua- 

 tions of the mysteries and traditions assigned to their care. These 

 traditions are linked with other traditions and with other mystic ex- 

 planations of uncomprehended phenomena. While human theories 

 of the sun, the stars, the clouds, of earthquakes, storms, comets, and 

 disease, have no direct relation to the feeling of worship, they can- 

 not be disentangled from it. The uncomprehended, the unfamiliar, 

 and the supernatural are one and the same in the untrained human 

 mind; and one set of prejudices cannot be dissociated from the 

 others. 



To the ideas acquired in youth we attach a sort of sacredness. To 

 the course of action we follow we are prone to claim some kind of 

 mystic sanction; and this mystic sanction applies not only to acts 

 of virtue and devotion, but to the most unimportant rites and cere- 

 monies; and in these we resent changes with the full force of such 

 conservatism as we possess. 



It is against limited and preconceived notions that the warfare of 

 science has been directed. It is the struggle for the realities on the 

 part of the individual man. Ignorance, prejudice, and intolerance, 

 in the long run, are one and the same thing. In some one line, at 

 least, every lofty mind throughout the ages has demanded objective 

 reality. This struggle has been one between science and theology 

 only because theological misconceptions were entangled with crude 

 notions of other sorts. In the experience of a single human life there 

 is little to correct even the crudest of theological conceptions. From 

 the supposed greater importance of religious opinions in determining 

 the fate of men and nations, theological ideas have dominated all 

 others throughout the ages; and in the nature of things, the great 

 religious bodies have formed the stronghold of conservatism against 

 which the separated bands of science have hurled themselves, 

 seemingly in vain. 



But the real essence of conservatism lies not in theology. The 

 whole conflict, as I have already said, is a struggle in the mind of man. 

 From some phase of the warfare of science no individual is exempt. 

 It exists in human psychology before it is wrought in human history. 

 There is no better antidote to bigotry than the study of the growth 

 of knowledge. There is no chapter in history more encouraging than 

 that which treats of the growth of open-mindedness. The study of 

 this history leads religious men to avoid intolerance in the present, 

 through a knowledge of the evils intolerance has wrought in the 

 past. Men of science are spurred to more earnest work by the 

 record that through the ages objective truth has been the final test 

 of all theories and conceptions. All men will work more sanely and 

 more effectively as they realize that no good to religion or science 

 comes from " wishing to please God with a lie." 



