362 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



most without exception, his great truths penetrate humanity only after 

 many centuries. Christianity itself is no exception. In one sense, 

 Christianity may be said to have died out a generation or two after the 

 death of Christ, for its fundamental truth then began to vanish. When 

 in the middle ages the church deemed itself more powerful than worldly 

 dynasties, it had, in the essence of Christ's teachings, lost all but the 

 semblance of the truth. Christianity was too profound a doctrine and 

 humanity too frail a vessel. 



The essential and profound truth of Christianity I take to be this : 

 that the law of the jungle, the law of the tooth and claw, must be re- 

 placed for the human species by a higher law; that humanity can only 

 reach its most perfect development and realize the highest ideals 

 through the reign of unselfishness. The beginning of Christianity thus 

 marks the transition of man from the kingdom of a lower to the king- 

 dom of a higher being. The Golden Eule is the definition that dis- 

 criminates one domain from the other. It has become the mission of 

 the industrial age to separate out from Christianity the essential from 

 its unessential doctrine. 



That the message of Christ is opposed to some of the primitive 

 forces of culture, such as war, for example, has been but poorly dis- 

 cerned. War is the most perfect embodiment of human selfishness. It 

 is selfishness in its most concentrated and brutal form. Let us give 

 credit to this industrial age that has laid bare these simple truths. 

 Science has replaced war in the list of the allies of Christianity. The 

 exploration of nature has revealed and demonstrated the inadequacy of 

 the law of the jungle for human progress. Science has supplied us 

 with the methods and the laws wherewith to check up human phenom- 

 ena and to show wherein and to what extent the selfish elements are 

 controlling in human activities. Science is supplying the instruments, 

 the test tubes and the balances, not for material things alone, but for 

 checking up our own experiences, and for applying to life itself those 

 tests that determine the elements that control in each configuration. 



If science has given us the tools, the methods, the point of view, 

 industrialism has given us the laboratory and the fiery furnace in which 

 to test them. The bringing of men together in great dependent groups, 

 the subdivision of human effort, the new conditions of life, the accidents 

 and dangers of modern industrial employment, have forced upon us 

 problems in bulk, and not in single instances. The business world has 

 shown how to divide up investments, risks and profits by the joint stock 

 organization. It has drilled us in the elimination of hazards and the 

 division among the many of the ownership and reward of the industries. 

 This very phenomenon emphasizes by contrast and makes inevitable the 

 consideration of the sharing of the hazards of the life of the individual 

 by society in general. To place the burdens of the individual upon the 



