SCIENCE-CULTURE FOR THE MASSES. 41 



estate is found, and whatever degree of culture it may 

 present. You will probably think I am about to touch on 

 ground which to the footsteps of most men should be 

 labelled " dangerous." But I have no fear that, in anything 

 I may say, I shall offend the susceptibilities of any one who 

 extends to others that liberality of thought and expression 

 he or she must demand for himself or herself. That science 

 of all kinds has intimate relations with religious beliefs, is a 

 statement which none may deny, were they inclined so to 

 do. It needs but a glance at the literature and daily events 

 of our time, to show that the controversial element in 

 modern intellectual life is one which therein attains, if not 

 its maximum, at least a very high phase, of development. 

 And it requires but a British Association meeting, and a 

 speaker free of thought, and plain of speech as well, like 

 Huxley or Tyndall, to set the world at large in a ferment 

 which takes years to subside, if indeed some of the particles 

 concerned can come to rest at all. If, therefore, science 

 and religion have nothing in common, why the disturbance ? 

 The fact is, that religious beliefs are too intimately connected 

 with scientific method and scientific affairs, to passively suffer 

 even an attempt at divorce. The religion of our minds is, in 

 truth, based more or less completely on the particular inter- 

 pretation of nature at which we have arrived, and these two 

 closely connected interests must stand or fall together. 



When, therefore, the disturbing elements of scientific 

 assertion and inquiry shock the religious beliefs of the in- 

 dividual, the sect, or the nation at large, what procedure or 

 line of conduct does it become every earnest and cultured 

 person to follow ? Certainly not that of bewailing the de- 

 struction, apparent or real, of his temples of belief ; not that 

 of bemoaning the razing to the ground of those tents wherein 

 he has so long and comfortably dwelt ; and not that, assuredly, 

 of asserting that, because his fathers worshipped in this 

 mountain or in that, he must therefore and of necessity do 

 the same. No ; if our beliefs are attacked, and if they are 

 worth defending at all, let us be up and doing. Meet your 



