RELIGION AND SCIENCE 237 



of the sea. So, in due time, with the thunder and 

 the Hghtning, with earthquakes, eruptions, comets, 

 eclipses, pestilences. 



This process of liberating matter from arbitrary 

 and mysterious power, of perceiving it as orderly 

 and endowed with regularity of natural law, of 

 bringing it more and more beneath human control, 

 was, on the other hand, accompanied by what may be 

 called a combined condensation and sublimation of 

 the spiritual forces accepted by human faith. They 

 are built up from spirit to spirits, spirits to gods, gods 

 to God. But now it seems as if this condensation 

 had reached its limit, and the sublimation could only 

 go farther by resolving the one God into an empty 

 name or the vaguest unreality. 



We look back and see the Gods of early man, 

 and are complacently prepared to believe that they 

 were based in error, products of mental immaturity, 

 to be relegated to limbo without regret. But what 

 about the present ? Why should we shrink from 

 applying the same process to the God of to-day ? 



Is it then to be so with every God ? Is God only a 

 personified symbol of our residuum of ignorance ? Is to 

 hold the idea of God in any form to be, as Salomon Rein- 

 ach believes, in an infantile stage of human develop- 

 ment, and must we with him define religion as ' a sum 

 of scruples impeding the free use of human faculty ' ? 



I think not ; and I shall endeavour to justify my 

 belief to you, and to show that, albeit much altera- 



