June 24, 1922] 



NATURE 



803 



the tree of knowledge ; and it was by like association 

 with the devil that Faust secured the knowledge of 

 renewed youth. 



This view of science is not altogether unknown even 

 in our own times. There are still heresy hunters who, 

 with their own literal interpretation of Biblical writ, 

 seek to extinguish the light of new knowledge. If 

 Darwin and Huxley had lived in the time of Bruno 

 and Galileo they would have suffered like penalties 

 for presenting evidence of man's relationship to other 

 primates. Leaders of the Church now accept the 

 principles of organic evolution, just as there is now an 

 observatory at the Vatican, and active astronomical 

 observers among the brothers and fathers of Catholic 

 priesthood. The truth is great and prevails in the 

 end. Scientific inquiry never ceases and must con- 

 tinually be a disturbing influence. It is applied to 

 all occurrences in which natural facts and phenomena 

 are concerned, and believes nothing without evidence. 

 Science does not set out to establish or depose any 

 particular articles of faith, but to examine critically 

 whatever comes before it in the natural world and to 

 testify faithfully to what is seen. The knowledge thus 

 gained may at times appear to undermine the founda- 

 tions of faith, but in the course of years there is a 

 readjustment of mental values, in which old errors 

 are lost. From a scientific point of view, a distinction 

 must be made between religion as an essential human 

 instinct and outworn theological creeds or formulae 

 which assert that belief in unnatural occurrences is 

 necessary for spiritual salvation. It is because of 

 the influence of science that the Dean of St. Paul's 

 can now say publicly, " the materialistic view of the 

 resurrection has never been universally held ; it was 

 denied by Origen, the ablest theologian of the third 

 century, and no intelligent man believes it now." 



Examination of evidence in the critical spirit of 

 scientific inquiry is responsible for the change of 

 attitude towards scriptural records of natural events 

 and phenomena represented in this remark of Dean 

 Inge's. Only those who remember the contumely 

 to which Huxley and Tyndall were exposed because 

 of their extension of scientific reason to theological 

 fields can appreciate the revolutionary change which 

 has occurred since their day and generation. The 

 great controversy between the evolutionists and the 

 creationists in the second half of the nineteenth century 

 corresponded closely with that between the Copernicans 

 and Ptolemaists three hundred years earlier, and in each 

 case belief had to give place eventually to ascertained 

 knowledge. It is the duty of science to continue to 

 fight ignorance and all that is implied by it, to be 

 intolerant of all that is false, to make honest doubt 

 a virtue, and condemn credulity as an intellectual 

 NO. 2747, VOL. 109] 



crime. We may not be more superstitious than our 

 fathers, but the vestiges of primitive man still remain 

 in our natures ready to throw up offshoots under 

 emotional stimulation. Much that passes under the 

 name of spiritualism comes within this categor>-, 

 and when the manifestations enter the domain .of 

 matter and energy, the methods by which they must 

 be investigated are those of physical science — critical 

 observation, dispassionate examination of results, and 

 crucial test of conclusions. These are the methods by 

 which science has become synonymous with accurate 

 knowledge, and has led the world into the way of 

 truth. In the present epoch of social and spiritual 

 reconstruction, the active ministry of scientific truth is 

 again needed to help the world to adjust itself to the 

 new conditions which knowledge has created. 



Medieval Cartography. 



Legendary Islands of the Atlantic : A Study in Medieval 

 Geography. By William H. Babcock. (American 

 Geographical Society, Research Series, No. 8.) 

 Pp. V + 196. (New York: American Geographical 

 Society, 1922.) n.p. 



THE migration of man across the ocean has 

 differed considerably from his movement 

 overland. On one hand, he has succeeded in taming 

 animals by way of improving on the exertion of his 

 own muscular effort, and in consequence he has per- 

 force followed natural routes determined in part by 

 a minimum of physical obstacles and a maximum 

 or, at any rate, sufficient food supply for his animals, 

 Moreover, through carelessness or accident he has 

 dropped implements or weapons which give clues to 

 the routes he followed and the sites of his settlements. 

 On the other hand, the passage of the sea has called 

 forth a different effort in the art of shipbuilding and 

 seamanship, and the hungry ocean has swallowed up 

 the remains of many a goodly ship which, through 

 storm or adventure, passed over the trackless deep. 

 Moreover, the wanderings of a people leave deeper 

 marks on the historical record than the deeds of the 

 men to whose individual prowess the opening of the 

 sea-ways was largely due. 



The author of " Legendary Islands of the Atlantic " 

 attempts to sift legend from fact and vision from 

 observation, in islands depicted on medieval maps of 

 tlie North Atlantic, and to obtain thereby the links 

 in the story of Atlantic exploration. Yarns of the 

 western sea no doubt became the stock-in-trade of 

 mariners and enabled cartographers to fill with shoals 

 and islands the blank of the Sea of Darkness. Though 

 more recent observations have shown that many of 



