Ill 



IN THE NOON OF SCIENCE 



HOW surely the race is working away from the 

 attitude of mind toward life and nature be- 

 gotten by an age of faith, into an attitude of mind 

 toward these things begotten by an age of science! 

 However the loss and gain may finally foot up, the 

 movement to which I refer seems as inevitable as 

 fate; it is along the line of the mental evolution of 

 the race, and it can be no more checked or thwarted 

 than can the winds or the tides. The disturbance of 

 our mental and spiritual equilibrium consequent 

 upon the change is natural enough. 



The culture of the race has so long been of a non- 

 scientific character; we have so long looked upon 

 nature in the twilight of our feelings, of our hopes 

 and our fears, and our religious emotions, that the 

 clear midday light of science shocks and repels us. 

 Our mental eyesight has not yet got used to the 

 noonday glare. Our anthropomorphic views of crea- 

 tion die hard, and when they are dead we feel or- 

 phaned. The consolations which science offers do 

 not move our hearts. At first the scientific explana- 

 tion of the universe seems to shut us into a narrower 



