16 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 



stuff by the name of Spirit or Matter signifies nothing ; for 

 these names are merely symbols, like the x and y of Algebra. 



VIII 





 Having come into being, as I said, under the dominance of 



theological ideas about the relation of the human soul to God 

 and the world, Science has hitherto been of necessity positive 

 and materialistic. The most earnest inquirers could not at 

 once emancipate themselves from prejudices for or against 

 the exclusive theories of spiritualism formulated by the 

 Churches. Christian dogmatists abruptly divided the soul 

 from Nature, regarded the universe as a machine created by 

 a God external to it, and laid this earth, our dwelling-place, 

 under the curse of sin and evil. Men of science deal accord- 

 ingly with Nature as something extraneous, outside the 

 mind ; as the object of inquiry, but not at the same time as 

 the subject of the intellect that inquires. The wisest forebore 

 from uttering opinions upon man's relation to the world ; and 

 this abstention, seeing that the word God was rarely found 

 upon their pages, seeing that they did not need 'that 

 hypothesis of Deity,' gained for them the reputation of 

 atheists with the vulgar. Christianity itself was responsible 

 for their position ; but the world lost nothing by the positive 

 and neutral spirit in which they had to work. On the 

 contrary, it gained considerably; for, without mystical or 

 theological bias, they have gradually been bringing home to 

 our intelligence more and more convincingly the truth that 

 we are part of Nature ; and if in a true sense part, then the 

 truest part of us, ourselves, our consciousness, our thought, 

 our emotion, must be part of Nature ; and Nature every- 

 where, and in all her parts, must contain what corresponds to 

 our spiritual essence. In this way Science, while establishing 

 Law, has prepared the way for the identification of Law with 

 God. I am far from asserting that any disciples of Science 

 at the present moment have drawn this corollary from her 

 teaching ; what I want to indicate is the inevitable point of 

 contact between Science and Religion. 



