MODERN BIOLOGICAL INQUIRY. 299 



the horrors of the lattei*, as you know, liave been ameliorated only 

 within very few years. 



I fear that the unhappy spirit of contention still survives, and that 

 there are yet a few who fight for victory rather than for truth. The 

 deceptive spirit of Voltaire still buds forth occasionally; he who, as 

 you remember, disputed the organic nature of fossil shells, because iu 

 those days of schoolmen their occurrence on mountains would be used 

 by others as a proof of a universal Noachian deluge. The power of 

 such spirits is fortunately gone for any potent influence for evil, gone 

 with the equally obstructive influence of the scholastics with whom 

 they formerly contended. 



Since, then, there is no occasion for strict science and pure religion 

 to be in conflict, how shall the peace be kept between them ? 



By toleration and patience toleration toward those who believe 

 less than we do, in the hope that they, by cultivation or inheritance 

 of aesthetic perception, will be prepared to accept something more than 

 matter and enei'gy in the universe, and to believe that vitality is not 

 altogether undirected colloid chemistry. 



Toleration also toward those who, on what we think misunderstood 

 or insufticient evidence, demand more than we are prepared to admit, 

 in the hope that they will revise additional texts which seem to 

 conflict, or may hereafter conflict, with facts deduced from actual 

 study of Nature, and thus prepare their minds for the reception of 

 such truths as may be discovered, without embittered discussions. 



Patience, too, must be counseled. For much delay will ensue 

 before this desired result is arrived at; patience under attack, patience 

 under misrepresentation, but never controversy. 



Thus will be hastened the time when the glorious, all-sufficient 

 spiritual light, which, though given through another race, we have 

 adopted as our own, shall shine with its pristine purity, freed from the 

 incrustations with which it has been obscured by the vanity of partial 

 knowledge, and the temporary contrivances of human polity. 



So, too, by freely-extended scientific culture, may we hope that 

 the infinitely thicker and grosser superstitions and corruptions will be 

 removed which greater age and more despotic governments have 

 accumulated around the less brilliant though important religions of 

 our Asiatic Aryan relatives. These accretions being destroyed, the 

 principal difficulty to the reception by those nations of higher spiritual 

 truths will be obviated, and the intelligent Hindoo or Persian will not 

 be'tai'dy in recognizing, in the pure life and elevated doctrine of the 

 sincere Christian, an addition to and fuller expression of religious 

 precepts with which he is familiar. In this manner alone may be 

 realized the hope of the philosopher, the dream of the poet, and the 

 expectation of the theologian a universal science and a universal 

 religion, cooperating harmoniously for the perfection of man and the 

 glory of his Creator. 



