240 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and meanwhile biosis is striving vigorously 

 to hold its ground against archebiosis. 



Behold ! are not Keligion and Life the 

 two greatest subjects ? You are quite anx- 

 ious that your readers shall fancy that reli- 

 gionists cannot agree in their definitions of 

 religion. But you do not show them that 

 even on the subject of Life the scientists 

 are greatly at difference. Prof. Owen says 

 that "Life is a sound ; " Schelling says it is 

 a " tendency." Herbert Spencer calls it 

 "a continuous adjustment." Dr. Meissner 

 says it is " but motion." Dr. Bastian holds 

 that he has produced plants and animals 

 from inorganic matter. Schultz positively 

 believes it never was done and cannot be 

 done : and Prof. Huxley holds that " con- 

 structive chemistry could do nothing with- 

 out the influence of preexisting living pro- 

 toplasm." 



I do not wish to crowd your pages, and 

 so content myself with these few instances 

 out of the multitudes of conflicting and 

 perplexing differences among " advanced 

 thinkers." 



Even you, my dear sir, have not utterly 

 escaped. You once wrote, " If the forces 

 are correlated in organic growth and nutri- 

 tion, they must be in organic action." Man- 

 ifestly, after that sentence was written, 

 you meditated, and, meditating, you dis- 

 covered that the sequitur was not quite as 

 apparent as it ought to be. You did not 

 strike out the sentence, but you apologized 

 for it handsomely by saying, " From the 

 great complexity of the conditions, the 

 same exactness will not be expected here as 

 in the inorganic field." But you see, my 

 dear sir, that theology is a science which 

 has for its field those subjects in which 

 there is the greatest complexity of condi- 

 tions, and you must not demand of your 

 brother scientists as much exactness in the 

 statements of a metaphysical proposition as 

 you may in the statement of the length of a 

 fish's tooth. 



But as to your statement that the forces 

 must be correlated in organic action, are you 

 not in danger of being " eaten up " by the 

 statements of your frieuds, Bastian, Barker, 

 and, what is still harder on you, Herbert 

 Spencer ? Prof. Barker teaches that the 

 correlation of the natural forces with 

 thought " has never yet been measured." 

 Then, it is a mere "guess." Dr. Bastian 

 says that it " cannot be proved " that sen- 

 sation and thought are truly the direct re- 

 sults of molecular activity. Then it is a 

 mere "guess." Mr. Herbert Spencer, 

 whose name is conclusive authority with 

 you, and who, I am most frank to ad- 

 mit, knows as much about the " unknow- 

 able " as any writer whose works I have 

 read, says that the outer force and the in- 

 ward feeling it excites " do not even main- 

 tain an unvarying proportion." Then it is 

 a mere " guess." And, my dear sir, I do 



most heartily agree with your statement, 

 " not he who guesses is to be esteemed the 

 true discoverer, but he who demonstrates a 

 new truth." 



Now, if Messrs. Spencer, Barker, Tyn- 

 dall, Huxley, Biichner, Draper, Youmans, 

 "& Co.," will "get together and settle" 

 what Life is, or Thought, "an important 

 step will be gained ;" and, not to be out- 

 done by your generosity, I will engage to 

 " pay the expenses of a convention of rea- 

 sonable length for such a purpose," but I 

 "stipulate not to foot the bills until you 

 reach an agreement." 



Trusting that both you and I, as we 

 grow older, may have more science and 

 more religion, and room enough in our heads 

 and hearts for both without " conflict," 

 I am, very faithfully, your co-laborer, 

 Charles F. Deems. 



Of course Dr. Deems meant to announce, 

 assert, and declare, the groundlessness of 

 the conflict between Religion and Science ; 

 and we think the readers of our article which 

 he criticises were not in the slightest danger 

 of misapprehending his position, notwith- 

 standing the slip of writing in which he is 

 said to have denounced it. 



Dr. Deems asks : " Why are you so 

 anxious to keep your readers from believing 

 that the gentlemen whose names you have 

 recited in fact do not, and really cannot, 

 agree as to what is religion ? " Has not 

 the doctor here slipped also, in inadvertent 

 haste, and does he not really mean, Why 

 are you so anxious to make your readers be- 

 lieve, etc. ? and to this we reply, that the 

 anxiety in regard to a definition of religion 

 has not originated with us. It is the re- 

 viewers of Dr. Draper who have called for 

 a definition of religion from him, and con- 

 demn his book as dealing with a "conflict" 

 existing only in his own imagination, be- 

 cause he has not defined what religion is. 

 Had he undertaken this, they tell us, it 

 would have at once appeared that there is 

 and can be really no such conflict. We 

 said that "the point of contention is as to 

 what constitutes religion," because the the- 

 ological reviewers of Draper charge that 

 what he treats as religion, and as conflict- 

 ing with science, is not religion. We 

 have not denied that religion can be so de- 

 fined as to avoid all antagonism with sci- 

 ence ; and there is hope that the time may 

 come when such a definition will be ac- 

 cepted and the antagonism will disappear. 

 We only maintain that in the historic past, 



