Improving Natural Knowledge 43 



the astronomers discover in the earth no center of the uni- 

 verse, but an eccentric speck, so the naturalists find man to 

 be no center of the living world, but one amidst endless 

 modifications of life; and as the astronomer observes the 

 mark of practically endless time set upon the arrange- 5 

 ments of the solar system so the student of life finds the 

 records of ancient forms of existence peopling the world 

 for ages, which, in relation to human experience, are in- 

 finite. 



Furthermore, the physiologist finds life to be as de- 10 

 pendent for its manifestation on particular molecular 

 arrangements as any physical or chemical phenomenon; 

 and, wherever he extends his researches, fixed order and 

 unchanging causation reveal themselves, as plainly as in 

 the rest of Nature. 15 



Nor can I find that any other fate has awaited the 

 germ of Religion. Arising, like all other kinds of knowl- 

 edge, out of the action and interaction of man's mind, 

 with that which is not man's mind, it has taken the in- 

 tellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism ; of Theism 20 

 or Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, 

 and their relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to 

 do ; but this it is needful for my purpose to say, that if the 

 religion of the present differs from that of the past, it is 

 because the theology of the present has become more 25 

 scientific than that of the past; because it has not only 

 renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins 

 to see the necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built 

 up of books and traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cob- 

 webs : and of cherishing the noblest and most human of 30 

 man's emotions, by worship " for the most part of the 

 silent sort " at the altar of the Unknown and Unknow- 

 able. 



Such are a few of the new conceptions implanted in 



