384 



NATURE 



[September 15, 1923 



ancients were handicapped by the want of scientific 

 instruments, and that their backwardness in invention 

 was partly due to an erroneous standard of values. If 

 Euro|K'an nations still think it a finer thing to l>e an 

 orator than a scientific inventor, tli.it js a prejudice 

 which we owe to the Greeks, 



The Roman " steam-roller " was not favourable 

 to originality and intellectual progress. After Galen 

 (about A.D. 200) a Sahara of scientific barrenness begins, 

 a dreary waste from which European history emerges 

 only in the sixteenth centur>'. Neither Hellenistic 

 philosophy nor Catholic Christianity did anything to 

 stop this barbarisation, the inevitable result of the 

 long orgy of superstition, massacre, and pillage which 

 we call the Dark Ages. Mankind carmot afford to 

 forget that a measure of stability in political and social 

 conditions is necessary not only for progress but also 

 for the preservation of the gains of the past. The 

 seven hundred years which followed the break-up of 

 the Western Empire might have been blotted out of 

 history without any great loss. 



The greater part of Mr. Marvin's excellent volume of 

 essays is devoted to modem problems. The writers 

 admit frankly that the materialistic trend of science in 

 the nineteenth century was the result of its unequal 

 development. Biology advanced more quickly than 

 psychology, and the sciences of inorganic nature were 

 ahead of biology. The tendency to reduce life to 

 mechanism is being abandoned in response to protests 

 from science itself, and the problems of conscious life 

 are seen to involve metaphysical questions with which 

 the older generation hoped to dispense. 



Prof. Whitehead, as is well known, thinks that the 

 theories of Einstein will have a revolutionar}' effect on 

 our conceptions of space and time. "The whole syn- 

 thesis of the seventeenth century has to be recast. Its 

 time, its space, and its matter are in the melting-pot — 

 and there we must leave them." It will take many 

 years before this judt^ment can be either affirmed with 

 confidence or denied. There is reason to think that 

 at present Continental thinkers are not prepared to go 

 quite so far as Prof. Whitehead and his friends. 

 There is no doubt that Einstein has made a great 

 mathematical discovery ; but we may be permitted 

 to doubt whether a mathematical discover)' is likely to 

 give us a new philosophy. 



Prof. Arthur Thomson deals judiciously with post- 

 Darwinian biology, and does not talk, as some are 

 rashly doing, about " the abandonment of natural 

 selection." But I cannot agree with him when he says 

 that " no conflict should be possible between religion 

 and science, unless we try to speak two languages at 

 once," or that " scientific and religious concepts are 

 incommensurable." The assumption which underlies 

 NO. 281 I, VOL. 112] 



such statements is that science deals with facts and 

 religion with values, and that it is possible to keep these 

 two aspects of reality apart. 1 maintain, on the con- 

 trary, that a fact without value is no fact, and a vah: 

 without fact no value. The two caimot be separatt< 

 and the salutary rivalry of scientific and religioti 

 truth must continue as long as men take both seriou 1> . 

 It will not do for science to say to rtliuion. " Lca\ « in. 

 alone and I will leave you alone." 



Mr. Julian Huxley's long essay on science and r< 

 takes a different line. It is interesting not oni_ 

 the discussion on the place which science can find for 

 the conception of God, but for the confident tone i: 

 which the author declares his conviction that tl 

 organic is evolved from the inorganic, through tl 

 development of colloids from smaller molecules. 

 " Thus the forms of life, simple at first, attained pro- 

 gressively to greater complexity ; mind, negligible in 

 the lower forms, became of greater and greater import 

 ance, until it reached its present level in man." M: 

 Huxley would not maintain that this theor>' has been de- 

 monstrated ; but it seems probable that the monistic 

 view of the structure of the universe will in time be 

 generally accepted. The alternative theory that an; 

 mated spores came to the earth from other bodies givto 

 no explanation of the origin of life, and has diflftculties 

 of its own. 



I am less satisfied with this writer's attempt to 

 justify a theistic philosophy by setting the progress 

 which he finds to be the law of organic evolution against 

 the pessimistic conclusion based on the second law of 

 thermodynamics. For even if we assume that increasing 

 complexity in living organisms carries with it increas- 

 ing value, the phase of evolution through which life on 

 this planet is passing is but a transitory episode, which 

 will probably be followed by a reverse process of involu- 

 tion, when our globe becomes less favourable to the 

 higher forms of hfe. In any case, planetary progress 

 can be only a backwash in the universal current which, 

 if the aforesaid law is true, is carrying all matter towards 

 immobility and final death. No satisfying theism can 

 be erected on this basis. It would surely be better to 

 assume that whatever power wound r.p the clock once 

 can wind it up again, and that the life of the imiverse 

 is perpetual, as its Creator is eternal. We are then free 

 to believe in a God whose being is above the recurrent 

 births and deaths of stellar systems. 



Mr. Marvin, however, pins his faith on progress in 

 time, and ends the book with a characteristic editorial 

 chirp. It is probably true, as he says, that humanity 

 is still young, and capable of achievements still un- 

 dreamed of. Hope for the future is reasonable, so 

 long as we do not make a religion of it. 



W. R. Inge. 



