NATURE 



[September 2, 1920 



goal of personality : that their methods are not 

 inconsistent; and that their goals may be 

 identical." 



Religion cannot, in fact, afford to ignore what 

 is true, and can have no real interest in believing 

 what is not true. We have passed the dangerous 

 stage when apologists strained analogies to prove 

 that science and orthodox Christianity, so far 

 from being in conflict, are really in perfectly 

 amicable agreement, and have reached a point at 

 which it is understood that science and religion 

 both contain systems of truth which must ultim- 

 ately prove to be congruent. Theological beliefs 

 no longer rest solely upon the ancient foundation 

 of authority, but are built upon a basis of reason. 

 Just as every event in Nature is a manifestation 

 of natural law or principle, known or unknown, 

 so religion is natural and not supernatural, and 

 the conceptions to which it leads may be sub- 

 mitted to similar inquiry. It is not a simple 

 phenomenon, but a complex of thought and 

 emotion, and the components of this complex have 

 yet to be resolved. 



The insufficiency of human life itself as an end 

 is dealt with philosophically by Prof. Boutroux 

 in his " Science and Religion in Contemporary 

 Philosophy," in which it is urged that the ideal 

 of duty summons us beyond the specifically human 

 to a noble struggle and a great hope, an ideal 

 which implies faith and love, and demands 

 divinity and a Being with Whom we can be 

 in communion. It is in the "living reason " inter- 

 preted in the light of duty that science, with- 

 out which we cannot live, and religion, without 

 which we do not wish to live, find their recon- 

 ciliation. 



The scientific view of religion, now accepted by 

 men of science and Churchmen alike, is that re- 

 ligion is the spiritual life of the individual, and 

 subject to development. Progress is possible here 

 as elsewhere, and in fact the history of the forms 

 of religion shows a gradual purification and 

 emancipation advancing with the gradual refine- 

 ment of experience. The goal, as a reviewer has 

 said in these columns, is- a union of God and 

 humanity, and the end must be the concrete 

 realisation of unity in life and purpose for which, 

 as for the unity of the world as object of the 

 sciences, the reality of the Divine immanence is 

 the only sure ground. 



The origin of religion itself is still obscure. 



Whether it arose from belief in spiritual beings, 



in the worship of the soul, in ancestor worship, 



in ghost propitiation, or in any other of the 



NO. 2653, VOL. 106] 



various views which have been put forward, has 

 yet to be decided. The system of social morality 

 early developed when primitive communities were 

 formed by man has little to do with religious 

 perceptions. It is easy to pass, however, from 

 the stage of veneration for great heroes or bene- 

 factors during life to that of ancestor worship after 

 death, and later to soul worship. There would 

 be sainted dead to worship, as well as malevolent 

 dead and spirits of disease to propitiate. Even- 

 tually might arise the philosophic conception that 

 continuation of life lies, not in the immortality of 

 the soul, but in the perpetual remembrance of the 

 righteous by mankind. All these matters are 

 legitimate subjects of inquiry, and men of science 

 may join with theologians in elucidating them. 

 The problems are difficult, but not beyond solu- 

 tion, and they are approached to-day in a less 

 dogmatic spirit than they were a few years ago 

 by advocates on both sides. As regards the true 

 relations between soul and body, we are in much 

 the same position as that of the Persian poet who 

 wrote long ago : — 



There was a Door to which I found no Key ; 

 There was a Veil past which I could not see. 



Whatever the end may be, we are urged to 

 the quest by that something within ourselves 

 which has produced from a primitive ancestry the 

 noblest types of intellectual man, and regards 

 evolution, not as a finite, but as an infinite, pro- 

 cess of development of spiritual as well as of 

 physical life. 



The Drying Up of South Africa— 

 and the Remedy. 



The Kalahari or Thirstland Redemption. By 

 Prof. E. H. L. Schwarz. Pp. vi-l- 163-f xiv 

 plates. (Cape Town : T. Maskew Miller ; 

 Oxford : B. H. Blackwell, n.d.) Price 8s. 6d. 

 net. 



WHILST Man of all races and skin-colours is 

 once more involved in fratricidal quarrels 

 — how Superior Intelligences in more advanced 

 spheres must grin as they watch our wars against 

 one another through super-telescopes or by 

 aethereal telegraphy ! — Nature is making one more 

 effort to get rid of man. This time through 

 Drought. She has seemingly hated everything 

 that rose ab»ve the mediocre on this planet, 

 whether it was in fish shape, or in the fish-saurian, 

 the dinosaur, the struthious bird, the ungulate 

 mammal, or the brain-worker, Man. She tried 

 to nip us in the bud by reviving the Ice ages 

 which she had used for other destructive purposes' 



