2o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it is easy to see that here we have the intellectual attitude and temper, 

 not of the calm, unprejudiced judge, but of the interested, brief- 

 holding advocate — an attitude and temper which must inevitably 

 lead to prevarication, special pleading, evasion, and the innumerable 

 evils of sophistry. 



In the so-called conflict of science and religion — which in reality 

 is the conflict of newly discovered truth with older and exploded 

 theories of things — we are thus shown again and again that while 

 the finest discipline for philosophical veracity is to be found in the 

 growth of the scientific spirit, its worst foe is always to be sought 

 in the diametrically opposite spirit of theology. • " Science abhors 

 finality in belief," said a distinguished English clergyman,* " but 

 this is precisely what theologians like. Science discovers facts, but 

 theology accepts revelation, and clings to creeds." Exactly; and 

 the contrasted mental results brought about by such conditions 

 respectively need scarcely be specified. Science has no creed to 

 support; theology has always had, and always will have. Sci- 

 ence, therefore, is free to look at all theories from the point of 

 view of facts; while theology is bound to look at all facts from 

 the point of view of accepted theories. In this simple circum- 

 stance lies a part explanation of the everlasting warfare between 

 them. 



But the spirit of theology is hostile to strict veracity for other 

 reasons than this finality of belief, this tenacity in regard to estab- 

 lished creed. Theology professes esoteric knowledge of what lies 

 beyond the reach of verification, and thus breeds contempt for 

 the processes of verification and disparagement of their impor- 

 tance. It labels all sorts of things which transcend knowledge, or 

 contradict accumulated evidence, " mysteries," thus dismissing them 

 from inquiry and encouraging looseness of thought. It fosters 

 undue reverence for tradition, authority, the " wisdom of our ances- 

 tors," and therefore tends to mental dependence, sluggishness, and 

 debility. It postulates belief as the ideal of the intellectual life; 

 proclaims implicit faith the greatest of virtues; teaches credence in 

 default or in spite of testimony; and so condemns the skepticism, 

 balance of judgment, reservation of opinion, acknowledgment of 

 nescience, in the absence of which the quest for truth is impossible, 

 and which are often the last results that the truthseeker is able to 

 offer as the reward of all his toil. Finally, theology, by its familiar 

 device of " reconciling " science with its own postulates when the 

 conclusions of science are no longer to be ignored or abused, under- 

 mines frankness, straightforwardness, the sense of honor and fair 



* Dr. Magee, late Bishop of Peterborough. 



