114 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



ing us to the idea of development in religion; and of 

 the effect of scientific discoveries in general upon man's 

 picture of the universe, which it is the business of re- 

 ligion to assimilate in its theology. Now I must say 

 something about the limitations of science. Science, 

 like art, or morality, or religion, is simply one way of 

 handling the chaos of experience which is the only 

 immediate reality we know. Art, for instance, han- 

 dles experience in relation to the desire for beauty, 

 or, if we want to put it more generally and more 

 philosophically, in relation to the desire for expressing 

 feelings and ideas in aesthetically satisfying forms. 

 Accuracy of mere fact is and should be a secondary 

 consideration to art. The annual strictures of Taylor 

 and Cutter on the men's costumes in the Academy 

 portraits are more or less irrelevant to the question of 

 whether the portraits are good pictures or bad pic- 

 tures. 



Science, on the other hand, deals with the chaos of 

 experience from the point of view of efficient intellec- 

 tual and practical handling. Science is out to find laws 

 and general rules, because the discovery of a single 

 law or rule at once enables us to understand an indefi- 

 nite number of individual happenings — as the single 

 law of gravitation enables us to understand the fall 

 of an apple, the movements of the planets, the tides, 

 the return of comets and innumerable other phe- 

 nomena. Science insists on continual verification by 

 testing against facts, because the bitter experience of 

 history is that, without such constant testing, man's 

 imagination and logical faculty run away with him, 

 and in the long run make a fool of him. And science 

 has every confidence in these methods because experi- 



