THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST, 69 
since war has claimed all our energies and _ at- 
tention, with every death-dealing appliance on one hand 
and every means to restore life on the other. The material 
side is dominant, and I come back to the minds— 
who, arrested by the disorder of the world, are proceeding 
to ask what it all means. 
The enquiring mind surveying the new conditions, 
measuring the gain and loss, asks, since after all 
it has not removed the old national conditions of strife, 
on one hand, and national poverty on the other, what it is 
all worth. Science has disturbed the mental outlook of mil- 
lions, has made old beliefs and many sweet superstitions 
impossible. After all, is it such a triumphant success as 
‘ 
we are led to suppose? It has done nothing to aid the dis-- 
appearance of war; in fact, it has only made it more in- 
finitely terrible and destructive. It has disturbed the re- 
ligious beliefs of thousands, and vast hosts of people can 
no longer accept the creeds they once accepted, and the 
stories of religion learnt at a mother’s knee. With what 
are they to replace it? Slowly, but imperceptibly, from 
this great sweltering chaos of confusion, of murders, and 
terrorisms of the great war, is arising a wider, if less de- 
fined belief, in which we shall reason back from life’s noble 
deeds and sacrifices, sweetness and duties, to some ac- 
cepted religion of love and hope and duty, removed from 
all ecclesiastical authority, and dependent for its accept- 
ance on its results. This is a great period of transition in 
which, as I have already emphasised, we are turning enquir- 
ingly to ask what all these things about us mean, and~ 
whither we are progressing now. No mental crisis so great 
has ever yet been upon the nations of the world, and so far 
as science is concerned, it is faced with serious questions, 
which it must answer. And it is because I think that the 
Naturalist, in his place amidst the complications of modern, 
science, can answer adequately many of these enquiries, 
and remind the world that science has its poetry and its 
musi¢, has its places of inspiration, its contact, if J may be 
permitted to suggest it'in such an address as this with what 
may possibly be not material, that I have been led to the 
present consideration of its relation to modern science. You 
cannot divorce feeling from her mate the deed, you ecan- 
not live on cold facts; ‘‘it is the heart and not the brain 
that to the highest doth attain,’’ and the Naturalist’s re- 
