880 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 102. 



Yet the parallelism is not complete, as may be 

 seen as soon as you look below the surface. 

 Digestion is a material process which, being 

 regulated by laws of physics and chemistry, is 

 not in any way affected by the theories you 

 form of its operation. But religion, as distin- 

 guished from theology, is a subjective experi- 

 ence, and, as such, it is liable to modification by 

 any or all the elements entering into such ex- 

 perience — by thoughts and beliefs, therefore, as 

 well as by aspirations and emotions. Further- 

 more, religion being so important and so perva- 

 sive a factor of our being, it tends to draw to 

 itself, to attach, if not to assimilate and absorb, 

 all associated phenomena of mind. There is 

 no room here to expand these statements, yet 

 they describe facts of the utmost importance in 

 any treatment of religion and theology. It re- 

 sults therefrom that a plain Christian naturally 

 supposes that his religious faith is assailed as 

 often as science rectifies those erroneous views 

 of the nature and operations of the material 

 world which he happens to have bound up in 

 the same parcel with his belief in a righteous 

 God, who reveals Himself to the pure in spirit. 

 This is the travail of religious experience. It is 

 this which makes the real tragedy in the his- 

 torical collisions between science and theology 

 described in Dr. White's book. 



But not only has religion the inborn habit of 

 annexing other provinces to itself. There is a 

 second cause of conflict with exact knowledge. 

 It is not given either to the natural man or to 

 the spiritual man, either to the worldling or to 

 the Christian, but only to the investigator who 

 explores and to the philosopher who reflects, to 

 understand the incomplete and fragmentary 

 character of human knowledge at every stage 

 of its development. If Omniscience sees all 

 things in a perfected infinite sphere, human be- 

 ings get but glimpses of scattered points on the 

 surface, and the scientist counts himself happy 

 if he can but trace the infinitesimal arc of a 

 minor circle. So again the philosopher, an- 

 alyzing the origin, nature and limits of knowl- 

 edge, soon discovers that at its best knowledge 

 is a small (though happily an expanding) island 

 surrounded by an infinite unknown. Both the 

 scientist and philosopher, therefore, recognize 

 not merely by general assent, but with genuine 



appreciation, the inherently provisional char- 

 acter and the progressive destiny of all theories 

 and beliefs which at any given time may be held 

 either by the generality of mankind or by its 

 thinking vanguard. Knowledge is a continu- 

 ous becoming; it has never attained — it is al- 

 ways on the way. Consequently the most as- 

 sured dogmas of to-day may need modification 

 and adaptation to the larger vision and deeper 

 insight of to-morrow. But this is just what the 

 uneducated man, whose mind is the victim of 

 fixed and rigid abstractions, cannot understand. 

 And as liberal culture has always been the pos- 

 session of the few, one sees how the Christian 

 world in general has so often been inhospitable 

 to the progress of exact knowledge and how 

 science has had to wage such a warfare against 

 established modes of thought. Add to this that 

 dogmatic theology, in previous generations at 

 any rate, has, as a rule, set up the ignorant 

 man's intoxication with completeness and 

 finality as an ideal for its own scheme of 

 thought, and you have all the conditions 

 necessary for the explanation of that historic 

 conflict which is the theme of Dr. White's in- 

 structive work. 



Dr. White himself take^!V;ognizance only of 

 this latter force. Everywhere he makes it clear 

 that dogmatic theology is at war with progres- 

 sive science. If the explanation of this an- 

 tagonism which has just been suggested be 

 correct, it becomes clear that the foes of science 

 are not merely the theologians with their fixed 

 and final systems, but all the embattled hosts of 

 ignorance who are indifferent to what is beyond 

 their own purblindness. It is a general oppo- 

 sition of darkness to light. It would still exist 

 were theology and theologians annihilated. 

 There is one passage in Dr. White's work 

 in which the author, if he does not rise to this 

 more general point of view, at least shows that 

 science in its progress has had to contend with 

 unreason which was not the unreason of theo- 

 logians. He says (Vol. I., p. 405) : 



"And it must here be noticed that this un- 

 reason was not all theological. The unreason- 

 ing heterodox when intrusted with irresponsible 

 power can be as short-sighted and cruel as the 

 unreasoning orthodox. Lavoisier, one of the 

 best of our race, not only a great chemist, but 



