CHAPTER XXII 



SCIENCE AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 



" Primus in orbe deos fecit timor " surmised 

 Petronius ; and the primaeval gods of primaeval 

 fear were capricious and emotional deities, dis- 

 pensing thunderbolts and smiles much as the fancy 

 took them. In a world ruled by divine caprice, 

 all superstitions throve ; augurs and sibyls drove 

 as prosperous a trade as any Piccadilly palmist, 

 and love philtres had as large a sale as any modern 

 liver-pill. But the wiser men soon grew tired of 

 an incoherent universe, and Epicurus and the 

 atomic school, rising in rebellion, endeavoured to 

 reduce to atoms the drunken and dissolute gods. 

 That was the birth of science ; and the work of 

 science for nearly two and a half millenniums may 

 be epitomised as the atomisation of the gods. How 

 far science has failed, and how far it has succeeded, 

 the preceding chapters will show. But science 

 has not only destroyed ; it has constructed. It 

 has destroyed the old capricious gods, but it has 



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