HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 575 



full has recent poetry been of this complaint ! One poet complains that 

 " science withdraws the veil of enchantment from Nature ; " one ex- 

 claims that " tliere was an awful rainbow once in heaven," but that 

 science has destroved it : another declares that " we murder to dis- 

 sect," that we should not be always seeking, but use "a wise passive- 

 ness " in the presence of Nature ; another that " Nature made undi- 

 vine is now seen slavishly obeying the law of gravitation ; " another 

 buries himself in past ages " when men could still hear from God 

 heavenly truth in earthly speech, and did not rack their brains." 



And yet to complain of the march of the scientific spirit seems as 

 idle as to complain of the law of gravitation itself. Influenced, some 

 by a deep faith in truth, a faith, I mean, that human well-being must 

 depend ultimately on truth ; others by a fanatical truth-worship, de- 

 termined to set up their idol even " amid human sacrifice and par- 

 ents' tears ; " others by a scientific esprit de corps which hates re- 

 ligion as belonging to a rival corporation ; others by that self-impor- 

 tance which is gratified by inflicting pain so much more than by giving 

 pleasure ; others by the tyrant's delight in having discovered a new 

 and exquisite torture influenced, in short, by all the mixed motives 

 which have ever urged on a great destructive movement, the icono- 

 clasts pursue their course. But we may look forward to a time when 

 this transition shall be over, and when a new reconciliation shall have 

 taken place between the two sorts of knowledge. In that happier age 

 true knowledge, scientific, not artificially humanized, will reign with- 

 out opposition, but, the claims of science once for all allowed, the 

 mind will also apprehend the universe imaginatively, realizing what it 

 knows. 



That kind of imaginative eclipse which is produced by the shadow 

 of science passing over any natural object has afi"ected in turn the 

 phenomena of Nature, taken separately, and man and God. The 

 " fair humanities of old religion," which found objects of love in trees 

 and streams, and filled the celestial map with fantastic living shapes 

 all this has long ago disappeared. More recently man has been 

 subjected to the analyzing process. The mechanical laws which were 

 traced in the physical world, it was long hoped, would never sufiice to 

 explain the human being ; he at least would remain always mysteri- 

 ous, spiritual, sacred. But nothing stops science ; hesitating between 

 curiosity that drags him on and awe that holds him back, vexed not 

 to know, yet half ashamed of knowing, man presses on into every 

 sanctuary. He begins now to reckon his own being among things 

 more than half explained ; nerve-force he thinks is a sort of electrici- 

 ty ; man differs greatly, indeed, but not generically, from the brutes. 

 AH this has for the time at least the efiect of desecrating human nature. 

 To the imagination human nature becomes a thing blurred and spoiled, 

 not really because the new view of it is in itself degrading, but be- 

 cause the imagination had realized it otherwise, and cannot in any 



