256 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



and lightning were the direct manifestations of the 

 wrath of Zeus; when plague, pestilence and famine 

 were a commentary on human sinfulness, and were 

 stemmed, not by medical and sanitary effort, but by 

 the erection of altars and the humble submission of 

 sacrificial atonements. The triumph of Newton and 

 Laplace consisted in showing that the obscure and 

 puzzling phenomena occurring in the heavens were to 

 be accounted for mechanically by the force of gravi- 

 tation. Thus it was that modern science was born; 

 and on those lines it has continued its successful career. 

 Lightning became one of the inanimate manifestations 

 of electricity: volcanoes were due to the spontaneous 

 radioactivity of complex atoms: disease was due to 

 the secretions of microbes and bacteria, which were 

 visible under the microscope. And the ambition of 

 science was to find a physical cause, on the same sort 

 of lines, for every occurrence of whatever nature it 

 might be. This ambition, which was formulated by 

 Newton himself as a hope and aspiration, has been 

 justified by long-continued experience. A physical 

 process underlies every class of phenomenon. The 

 evolution of living things, the evolution of the stars 

 and planets, the birth and death of worlds, are going 

 on before our eyes. Even the evolution of matter 

 itself is under consideration. The stars have yielded 

 up their secrets, the atoms also. The laws of physics 

 and chemistry reign supreme throughout the cosmos. 



What wonder then, in face of this magnificent 

 achievement, if spiritualistic views and hypotheses are 

 looked at askance as a backward step, a reversion to 

 barbarism, a giving up of the clue which human genius 



