"RELIGION AND SCIENCE" 295 



ously working towards the enemy's goal. Hitherto we have had narrative and 

 description only. We will now, gentlemen, have a little logic, if you please, and 

 take the place-kick. 



First. The so-called incompatibility of religion and science is proclaimed solely 

 from the ranks of those whose subject has not yet reached the scientific stage, and 

 from the ranks of pseudo-science. 



Second. In both of these ranks, "words and their wonderful play" are the chief 

 weapons ; and they are employed with a pertinacity truly amazing. 



Third. There has not, in all, been any very persistent or even vociferous 

 assertion of the so-called incompatibility. 



From these it indubitably follows : 



Fourth. That, even among those whose subject has not yet reached the scien- 

 tific stage, and among the pseudo-scientific, there can be but few who maintain the 

 so-called incompatibility. 



Fifth. As this tenet is held only by a small minority of those who are on the 

 wrong side of the abyss above mentioned, which separates the genuine scientific men 

 from the rest of the species, it might be entirely disregarded were it not for its 

 pernicious effect upon those who do not even pretend to be scientific. 



Thus the really serious question is, " How can this pernicious effect be neutra- 

 lised or remedied ? " Not, certainly, by anathematising as infidels those who are 

 rather to be pitied for their ignorance. And, most certainly, not by pulpit denun- 

 ciations, in which the most transparently absurd dicta of pseudo-science are com- 

 placently used as weapons against adversaries armed with the very same a 

 Kilkenny-cat display without claws or teeth on either side. If the clergy upon 

 whom, more than on any others, this task ought to fall would lay much more 

 stress than they have hitherto thought of doing upon the humility which is charac- 

 teristic of all true knowledge, whether it be religious or scientific, and upon the 

 blatant boasting equally characteristic of ignorance, they would be able easily to 

 convince their flocks that the present outcry is the work of a small minority only, 

 and has no countenance whatever from those who really know science. 



