EDWARD P. FROST, ON THE 



1. I have been impelled to give utterance to the reflections 

 which form the subject of this paper by the feeling that, as the 

 days of the new century pass, ever-increasing numbers of 

 individuals are finding it more and more difficult to hold fast 

 their religious beliefs and so maintain the life of their souls ; 

 while at the same time this serious state of affairs appears to be 

 either unnoticed or ignored by many of those teachers and 

 authorities who might have been providing help and relief. 



2. In suggesting that certain elements of evil have attended 

 the recent triumphs of Physical Science, I am not venturing 

 to reproach Science or to blame scientific investigators for 

 consequences which they could not be expected to foresee, 

 to provide against which moreover does not appear to be their 

 business. At any rate it is still more the business of those 

 who are supposed to study moral rather than physical 

 phenomena. 



3. During the last fifty years, elementary education has 

 become general, the facilities for the acquirement by the 

 elementarily educated of miscellaneous information have been 

 enormously multiplied, and the popularisation of Science has 

 become prevalent ; while through the same period physiological 

 discovery has advauced with ever-quickening acceleration, until 

 we seem to have arrived within measurable distance of the 

 solution of some of the fundamental problems presented by that 

 branch of Science. 



4. For instance, before long matter may be analysed, relatively 

 to human limitations, into imponderables, namely, energy, 

 position and quantity ; and what then becomes of the natural 

 conception of " A positive antithesis between mind and matter, 

 between the 4 spiritual ' and the ' material ' ? " And if it should 

 appear to many an untrained intelligence that the conception 

 of matter which seems to have been entertained is being 

 inverted or shattered, is there not at once a grave menace to 

 their conception of the correlative of " the material " ? What 

 is to become of their vague apprehension of the immaterial, of 

 the spiritual ? Their "little knowledge," if indeed undigested 

 information deserve the name of knowledge, has become "a 

 dangerous thing," and yet we can neither forbid them to " taste " 

 nor bid them to " drink deep " with any reasonable expectation 

 that they will do so. Who is likely to impress upon them the 

 simple fact that no essential distinction has been affected, or 

 can be affected by any such analysis, and that since matter is as 

 phenomenal and mind as real as ever, " a positive antithesis " 

 between them is still maintained. 



