The Higher Usefulness of Science 61 



being is proof positive that nature is capable of pro- 

 ducing mental and moral beings, if we are right in our 

 conclusion that man is a part of nature. In other 

 words, mentality and spirituality and morality are 

 among the productive capabilities of nature. 



I believe that science must come to see that it has 

 greatly curtailed its own power for good to man on 

 the higher side of his being, by having fallen victim to 

 essentially the same erroneous mode of reasoning about 

 genesis in nature that seemingly most theology, cer- 

 tainly Christian theology, fell into centuries ago. 

 That error consists in the supposition that judgments 

 about the attributes and the value of things objectively 

 presented to us, are more dependent on knowledge of 

 the origin of those objects than they really are, and 

 that we may acquire a finality of such knowledge which 

 as a matter of fact we never do and perhaps never shall 

 acquire. It is highly significant that in interpreting 

 organic beings, modern biology should cling to its 

 hypotheses of the production of the organic from the 

 inorganic, and of natural selection as the cause of evo- 

 lution, hardly less dogmatically than Christian cos- 

 mography clung and still clings to its hypothesis of 

 the origin of the world and of man by divine fiat. 



And equally significant is it that opinions held about 

 the character, and estimates made of the worth of the 

 world and of man as these actually exist, have been 

 influenced in almost equal degree by the dogmas of 

 origination held by Christian theology and by modern 



