ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 17 



kept them sundered, is commencing to be talked of in a more 

 serious tone. The wonder-maker may have forced upon him, 

 may welcome, the honors of the priest, though he pose as the 

 humble slave of Nature and her secrets. Presently the founda- 

 tions and institutes, which coexist with the cathedrals and 

 churches, just as once the new Christian chapels and congregations 

 stood side by side with pagan temples and heathen shrines, may 

 oust their rivals, and assume the monopoly of ritual. Should its 

 spirit remain fine and clear, should it maintain the glorious 

 promise of its dawn, should its high priests realize the perpetually 

 widening intimations of its universal triumph, and escape the ossi- 

 fication that has overtaken all young and hopeful things and 

 institutions, the real foundation for a future of the species would 

 be laid, and so its ultimate suicide prevented. 



The time has gone by, however, for any complacent assurance 

 that the redemption of mankind is to be attained by a new 

 religion of words. There is no doubt that the damnation or salva- 

 tion of an individual has often been determined by a religious 

 crisis, in which the magic of words have worked their witchery. 

 There is plenty of evidence that a psychic conversion will effect 

 an actual revolution in the whole way of living of the victim or 

 patient, as you like it. William James, in his "Varieties of 

 Religious Experience," established that pretty definitely. When 

 it comes to groups, races, nations, the outlook is wholly different- 

 There is a conflict of so many and diverse habits and interests, 

 beliefs and prejudices, that hope for some common merely intel- 

 lectual solvent for all of them is rather forlorn. If at all, the 

 resolution of the conflict will come by a pooling of actual powers 

 and interests, in which the religion of science will play the great 

 part of the Liberator of mankind from the whole system of tor- 

 ments that have made the way of all flesh a path of rocks along 

 which a manacled prisoner crawls to his doom. 



Science and Human Nature 



Science has a future. The religion of science has a future. 

 Can science assure us that human nature, in spite of its beast- 

 brute-slave origins holds the possibility of a genuine transforma- 

 tion of its texture? Can Fate's stranglehold upon us be broken? 

 There will be certainly a tremendous, an overwhelming increase 

 in the general stock of informations we call physics and chemistry 

 and biology. An abundance of new comforts, novel sensations, 



