PREFACE 



A LITTLE work that has been recently issued by Sir Oliver 

 Lodge, one of the most gifted physicists in this country, 

 affords an instructive commentary on the opinion that 

 the conflict between science and theology is over. The 

 thoughtful reader cannot but see that such an opinion is a 

 very superficial estimate of the relation of these two great 

 branches of thought. That theologians contrive to per- 

 suade themselves of so desirable a consummation is not a 

 matter of surprise ; nor can we wonder that even Agnostic 

 men of science, eager to save their valuable special research 

 from the hampering complication of this conflict, frequently 

 express, though on very different grounds, a somewhat 

 similar opinion. 



The discerning observer who stands outside both camps 

 cannot fail to see that the truce is a hollow one. If the 

 fundamental doctrines of theology are to be held in any 

 other than a figurative sense, they demand for their base a 

 spiritual universe that is not an evolution or an outcome of 

 visible nature. If the principle of life and thought in man 

 can be conceived as an especially elaborate synthesis of the 



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