MATTER, ENERGY, CONSCIOUSNESS 

 AND SPIRIT 1 



THE feeling is gradually awakening in the con- 

 sciousness of the community, that the discoveries 

 and advances made by science in the past century 

 are not such as they have been accustomed to be 

 represented by people to whom they are a sealed 

 book, as important to money-making and trade, 

 for waging war and overtaking the heavy drudgery 

 of the world, but in an altogether different category 

 from humane studies. The scientific materialist in 

 seeking to understand the external physical universe, 

 and the relation in which men stand thereto, has 

 invaded territories which formerly the humanist and 

 theologian had to themselves, and made discoveries 

 which are essential to the understanding of modern 

 life and its problems. If it were necessary to make 

 choice between the old and the new in its relation 

 to the world of to-day, rather than in relation to 

 some remote childhood of the world, the knowledge 

 gained in the last hundred years surely is the part 

 of the whole of knowledge which could least be 

 spared. It is just this part which men who have 

 to govern modern peoples, administer the affairs 

 of present-day empires, and instruct and educate 

 the youth of the world, usually know least about. 

 That science has something to say apart from its 



1 Lecture to the Aberdeen University Christian Union, Marischal 

 College, 25th April 1919. 



149 X 



