I NT RODUCTORY. 



TN the early days of our race all natural phenomena were looked 

 ■*- upon as personal actions ; as the doings of gods, or of demons, 

 or of the spirits of the dead. So that whenever it was desired to 

 influence the course of events, and most men wish to do this, it 

 became needful to take into account the inclinations of these 

 powerful persons. 



Hence arose what was called religion, which is from an Aryan 

 root, " lag," to regard. It is the etymological opposite of the word 

 " neglect," just as, in Latin, religens is the converse of negligens. 

 And while religens means religious, religiosus means devoted. 

 Religion, then, in a sense which includes every form of departed 

 faith, had nothing necessarily to do with what we call morality, but 

 referred to those observances — placatory, ceremonial, or sacrificial 

 — that most nations have paid to the persons they worship. 



It is clear that men, and especially members of a priesthood, 

 who were pervaded with notions of this kind were not only unlikely 

 to discover natural laws, but would be too ready to oppose any 

 inquirers who, by gaining exact knowledge, had begun to see that 

 old teachings were not always true. 



So gathered the fateful conflict between Science and Religion. 

 A strife of this sort must end in one of three ways. 



i. Science may be crushed. This has been the end generally 

 heretofore ; as when Roger Bacon was cast into prison, while his 

 writings were prohibited. 



2. Or men may be compelled by logical necessity to believe the 

 new learning, and may yet retain their old contradictory faith. 

 Creeds that with very little modification have been taught for the 

 last 15,000 years, have become hereditary, have entered into the 

 material structure of the brain ; and men shrink from the horror 

 of uprooting them. But this inconsistency cannot be permanent : 

 for as scientific proof grows ever more cogent, children are taught 

 the old dogmas with less confidence, and the inherited tendency 

 to believe them gets ever feebler. 



3. Or, lastly, religious teaching may change. Let us illustrate 

 these points by examples. 



