546 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Again, we must turn to human knowledge, and ask whether it can 

 lead us to the truth or near to it. Here we find the picture reversed. 

 Whereas, the religious conceptions claiming the truth for their own, 

 separate in course of time further and further from one another (wit- 

 ness the splitting of the christian church into three great branches, 

 catholic, Roman catholic and protestant, and the further schism into 

 innumerable sects) so, on the other side, the laws and concepts which 

 science accepts as true come, in course of time, ever closer together. 

 The rotation of the earth about the sun, stigmatized as false by the 

 dominant religion, was not on that account abandoned by science as a 

 truth. Historically speaking, science has always maintained its stand, 

 while it has ever been the church which yielded to the decision of sci- 

 ence, sometimes after long waiting. The most orthodox priest would not 

 now venture to deny the Copernican theory, and would not be seriously 

 taken by his followers if he did. 



It can not be otherwise than that science should gradually supersede 

 the religions, when it comes to investigating the truth, for it lies in the 

 nature of the influence exerted by science on the aspect of life. The 

 religions must drop their old concepts in proportion to the measure in 

 which the spirit of science permeates the people. 



When man made his first attempt at comprehension of the chaos 

 of the world, the sum of such thoughts, constituting the germs of that 

 which we now call poetry, science, religion, technology, was all put in 

 one basket. The early bearers of the torch of culture were priests, 

 doctors, rulers, judges, all in one. That was quite possible, since the 

 sum total of intellectual possessions was not very great and might find 

 commodious lodgment in a single head. With growing specialization, 

 some of these functions were of necessity delegated to certain classes. 

 The position of first comer and the prestige of tradition long enabled 

 the priesthood to still reserve to itself the functions of government. 



The source of the conflict between science and religion lies in the 

 fact that science takes part in the development of the human speciea 

 and is, herself, the most distinctive and purest expression of this devel- 

 opment, while the religions seek to remain as unchanged as possible, 

 although in doing so they condemn themselves to destruction. In 

 consequence of the illusion which always located the golden age in the 

 past, the priesthood never surmised that their attitude was equivalent to 

 suicide, and emphasized just that which must ultimately make their 

 position untenable. When the contrast between the old, cherished by the 

 priesthood, and the new, which life brings, becomes too obvious, the 

 phenomenon known as a " Reformation " follows, as, for example, the 

 reformation of Judaism by Jesus and of Christendom by Luther and 

 Calvin. The only reason why no similar reformation has occured in 

 protestantism is that science has gained such an influence, even within 



