1875.) The Possibility of a Future Life. 477 
time to time counter-raids, more or less injudicious—of which 
Dr. Tyndall’s Belfast Address is one of the latest instances. 
Now the way to end this fruitless feud is the simplest 
thing possible. Let both parties enter into a treaty of ‘ let 
be for let be” as it is called in homely phrase. Let divines 
cease to judge scientific theories by theological standards, 
and to preach against the researches of Darwin. Let men 
of science, in turn, cease to proclaim everything non-existent 
and inconceivable which they cannot weigh in the balance 
or observe with the spectroscope. Let each, Religion and 
Science, be content to pursue its own objects by its own 
methods, and for the reconciliation of difficulties let both 
wait in faith. Such a settlement was first hinted at by 
Giordano Bruno and was advocated in full by Galileo in his 
celebrated letter to the Dowager Grand-Duchess Cristina of 
Tuscany. Here he contends that the Scriptures have no 
claim to be received as a scientific revelation ; that on astro- 
nomical and physical questions,—to which we might now 
add geological and biological,—they convey merely the 
notions current at the times when they were written. 
If we accept this view all difficulty is at an end. But 
there are many who seek to bring about a reconciliation, not 
by relegating Religion and Science each to its own depart- 
ment, but of bringing them inco harmonious inter-depend- 
ence. Many have been the attempts made in this dire¢tion, 
agreeing perhaps in nothing save the unsatisfactory character 
of their results. Some have extracted systems of science 
from Hebrew roots under high-pressure philology, a mental 
diet analogous to the soup obtained from old bones in Papin’s 
digester. Others have sought reconciliation by denying or 
explaining away the most elementary truths of science. As 
an instance of this method we may recall the existence of a 
book,—some few copies of which may have escaped the 
hands of the trunk-maker and the butterman—entitled 
“Errors in Electricity, Magnetism, and Chemistry,” by a 
F.R.S. In this perhaps the only really noteworthy pas- 
sage was the author’s solemn confession that he had never 
made, individually or by proxy, a single experiment in any 
of the sciences for which he undertook to legislate. 
The writers of the book before us are of a very different 
grade, and bring to their task far higher qualifications. They 
are beyond dispute men of science, well acquainted with the 
latest achievements of modern research and willing to accept 
them as true. They receive for instance the nebular hypo- 
thesis concerning the origin of the heavenly bodies,—a view 
not merely anathematised by divines, but which even a 
