526 
NATURE 
[APRIL 21, 1923 
that the impossibility of the third electron getting into | “ the religion of science,” and argues that man cannot 
a I-quantum orbit is of the same nature as the im- 
possibility of intercombinations in the helium spectrum 
or of the two coplanar electrons of the orthohelium 
spectrum getting both into coplanar 1-quantum orbits. 
These impossibilities seem to be connected with the 
absence of any coherent class of mechanically possible 
orbits which continuously connect together the initial 
with the desired final state, but the absence of such 
classes is scarcely yet established. 
Granted the answer “ to the first question, the 
answer “ in general terms can now be given fairly 
to the second, though of course only a fraction of the 
interesting points of detail have yet been worked out. 
It can already be stated definitely that, for example, 
the iron group accompanies the establishment of orbits 
of type (n=3, k=3) in the normal atom which (it is 
almost a direct deduction) appear for the first time at 
scandium. They occur in the fourth period and differ- 
entiate it from the second and third because there for 
the first time is it arithmetically possible for successive 
atoms to differ by an extra electron in an inner orbit 
instead of in an external one. In the same way the 
rare earth group is associated with the development of 
orbits of the type (7=4, k=4), the outer orbits con- 
sisting of both 5-quantum and 6-quantum orbits, the 
same in number and much the same in form from atom 
to atom. 
It is a great theory and a great work. 
fruitful stages are yet to come. 
yes ”? 
yes ” 
Its most 
R. H. Fow er. 

Religion and Evolution. 
The Religion of Science. By Prof. William Hamilton 
Wood. Pp. xi+176. (London: Macmillan and 
Co., Ltd., n.d.) 6s. net. 
T the present time it is especially interesting to 
compare the way in which, in different parts of 
the world, thoughtful men regard the relation between 
religion and science. We should expect to find a 
general uniformity in the different attitudes of repre- 
sentative thinkers in Great Britain and America. We 
are largely of the same stock. We speak substantially 
the same language, so that books in large numbers pass 
in both directions across the Atlantic. But it is a 
curious fact that the popular religious dislike of evolu- 
tion, which even enters into politics in the Middle 
Western States, affects leaders of American thought. 
No theologian of eminence in England would now 
challenge a scientific conclusion, for which experts com- 
bine to demand our assent. Yet, in the book before 
us, the professor of biblical history and literature in a 
college at Hanover, N.H., makes a vigorous attack on 
NO. 2790, VOL. 111] 


be fitted into the scheme of biological evolution. No 
fossil or organic half-man, says the professor in impres- 
sive italics, has ever been discovered, and never will be. 
(Grammatically the final clause means the opposite 
of what the professor intends; but we will let that 
pass.) 
Most readers of NaTuRE will be tempted to say at 
this stage, “The man’s a crank. No need to read 
further.” But the judgment would be unjust. Prof. 
Wood, though his literary style is at times painful, has 
clearly given close thought to the problems which he dis- 
cusses. As against certain views expressed by American 
writers, in works with which we are unfamiliar, he 
argues acutely. He shrewdly exposes the illegitimate 
metaphysical assumptions of the “ science-theology,” 
which we should agree with him in condemning. But 
he has not apprehended the larger synthesis generally 
accepted by English theologians. Because his outlook 
is too limited, the theory of evolution seems to. him to 
eliminate “God as a real existence and personality.” 
So to preserve religion he rejects evolution. 
This apparent necessity could not arise were there 
not a latent dualism in his thought. Christian the- 
ology in the third century took over from Neoplatonism 
a belief in the unity and solidarity of the universe. 
This belief, of course, is in fundamental harmony with 
the teaching of Christ. Failure to preserve it intact in 
all its implications is the source of most of the diffi- 
culties which have troubled Christian divines in their 
warfare with “science-theology.” Prof. Wood is 
really following a degenerate tradition when he opposes 
the “natural” to the “supernatural” instead of 
pleading that in all Nature spiritual activity is mani- 
fest. His dualism causes him to speak of, “ on one side, 
the non-moral development of the universe which is 
continuous, while within this, or related to it, is the 
moral evolution terminating in man.” He can also 
say, “The main point is not whether mankind came 
originally from a single pair or was spawned like larve, 
nor is it our simian ancestry. It is that man is a de- 
rived and, therefore, secondary product.” Weneed not — 
comment on the biological character of the first sen- 
tence ; but we would ask, Why should the derived — 
ee of the harmonious working of a universe, in- 
formed by Spirit, be secondary? Surely we should 
expect the creative activity of Spirit to work towards — 
something of which it is the archetype; or, in more 
familiar language, that God has, by the slow process of 
evolution, created man for communion with Himself. 
Prof. Wood does not see that, if Christian thinkers 
can justify their belief that the whole world arose and 
took its pattern because of the creative activity of - 
Spirit, they neéd not quarrel with evolution. On the — 


