140 GENESIS VERSUS NATURE rv 



foreigner, has very little chance of making the 

 truth prevail with Englishmen against the authority 

 and the dialectic skill of the greatest master of per- 

 suasive rhetoric among English-speaking men of 

 our time. As the Queen's proctor intervenes, in 

 certain cases, between two litigants in the in- 

 terests of justice, so it may be permitted me to in- 

 terpose as a sort of uncommissioned science proc- 

 tor. My second excuse for my meddlesomeness is, 

 that important questions of natural science 

 respecting which neither of the combatants pro- 

 fesses to speak as an expert are involved in the 

 controversy ; and I think it is desirable that the 

 public should know what it is that natural science 

 really has to say on these topics, to the best belief 

 of one who has been a diligent student of natural 

 science for the last forty years. 



The original " Prolegomenes de 1'Histoire des 

 Religions" has not come in my way; but I have read 

 the translation of M. B^ville's work, published in 

 England under the auspices of Professor Max 

 Miiller, with very great interest. It puts more 

 fairly and clearly than any book previously known 

 to me, the view which a man of strong religious 

 feelings, but at the same time possessing the 

 information and the reasoning power which enable 

 him to estimate the strength of scientific methods 

 of inquiry and the weight of scientific truth, may 

 be expected to take of the relation between science 

 and religion. 



