Introduction 9 



validity at all, must affect our admiration, not merely of Sirius and 

 Orion, but of all things beautiful, whether they be suns or flowers. 

 Perhaps so. I am not, however, here concerned with the general 

 theory of aesthetics, but only with the questioia whether there is, 

 or is not, any emotional incongruity between the character of 

 the material universe as displayed by science, and the spiritual 

 importance of the events which are believed by the adherents 

 of more than one great religion to have occurred upon our 

 planet. If aesthetic problems have incidentally been raised, it 

 is no present business of mine. Here I am only dealing with 

 religion and science. 



Again, there may be critics who think poorly of the theory of 

 perception which I have assumed without discussion in the pre- 

 ceding paragraphs. How far this will meet the approval of my 

 philosophic readers must depend, I suppose, upon their philosophy. 

 I need only say that, to the best of my belief, it is the only one 

 consistent with science as commonly understood, and therefore 

 the only one relevant to my immediate argument. 



VI 



Most persons, however, who treat science as the enemy of 

 religion are not thinking so much of these emotional antagonisms 

 as of hard contradictions about matters of fact. In their view 

 science gives one account of what has been or is, and religion gives 

 another. Since both alternatives cannot be true, on which (they 

 ask) should we pin our faith .? Having stated the question in 

 these general terms, they perhaps condescend to particulars. 

 Taking for illustration the collection of ancient books held sacred 

 in the West, they inquire whether we are really to believe that the 

 world was created some six thousand years ago, that the work of 

 creation was accomplished in six days, that life, human and sub- 

 human, was almost exterminated by a flood, that springing afresh 

 from the surviving remnant, mankind repeopled the earth, became 

 divided in race and language, and finally produced, among many 

 mighty nations, a small people whose history, plentifully seasoned 

 with marvels, has profoundly modified the religious history of the 

 world. 



Now evidently summaries of this type treat the Bible as if it 

 professed to be (among other things) a textbook of cosmology and 



