CHAPTER VII 



THE LATEST STAGE 



The New Dispensation The Expansion of Physical Science Corpuscles 

 and Electrons Radio-activity The Individual Atom The Lumini- 

 ferous ^Ether The Principle of Relativity Mendel and the Laws 

 of Inheritance Neo-vitalism Modern Psychology Comparative 

 Religion The Theory of Scientific Knowledge Science and Philo- 

 sophy Science and the Human Mind. 



THE last two chapters have described the character- 

 istics of the science of the nineteenth century, and their 



The New bearing on the eternal problems that face 

 Dispensation, the human mind. We have seen how 

 the physical concept of everlasting unchanging atoms, 

 placed in a Universe containing a definite and limited 

 amount of energy, was pointing anew to the old 

 theory of a rigid determinism, described by mechanical 

 laws and leading to a hard, materialistic philosophy. 

 This tendency was increased and completed by the 

 application of the principle of the conservation of 

 energy to the functions of living beings, and by the 

 theory of natural selection, which undermined theo- 

 logical ideas then current and gave to evolution a 

 method of action independent of teleological influence. 



We have now to trace the modification of the 

 attitude of mind induced by nineteenth-century 

 science. We must describe the widening of mental 



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