Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/37

Rh in what sense we use the word religion. Men who would be very much ashamed of themselves if they were detected using scientific words inaccurately, do, nevertheless, attribute meanings to the word religion, which it is difficult to hear with patience. I have heard an eminent scientific man upon a public occasion, and in a serious manner, define religion to be duty, making a mere idle play upon the original meaning of the word. Without, however, entering into verbal discussions, it will be, surely, enough to define religion as a practical belief in, and consciousness of, God and immortality; and, as the latter is now absolutely essential to the idea of religion as a motive moral power, and as, moreover, it includes, or at any rate necessitates the belief in the existence of God, we may fairly conclude that, for all practical purposes, and certainly for the purpose of this argument, religion is synonymous with a belief in immortality. And if, for any reason, mankind does at any time cease to believe in its own immortality, then religion will also have ceased to exist as a part of the consciousness of humanity. To clear up, therefore, the relations between immortality and science becomes a matter of the utmost importance It will be well next to analyze briefly the effect which science has upon the nature of the proofs by which this, like all other facts, must be demonstrated. Let us, for convenience' sake, regard the world as a vast jury, before which the various advocates of many truths, and of still more numerous errors, plead the cause of their respective clients. However much a man may wrap himself up in the consciousness of ascertained truth, and affirm that it makes no matter to him what the many believe, yet Nature is in the long-run too powerful for him, and the instinct of humanity excites him to plead the cause of what he knows to be truth, and to mourn in his heart and be sore vexed if men reject it. Truth is ever generous and hopeful, though at the same time patient and long-suffering; she longs to make converts, but does not deny herself or turn traitress to her convictions if converts refuse to be made. There is a sense, indeed, in which it may be said that truth only becomes actual and vital by becoming subjective through receiving the assent of men. What, then, must the advocate for the fact of the immortality of the soul expect that science will require of him when he pleads before the tribunal of the world for that truth which, because it is dear to himself, he wishes to enforce on others?

The alterations in the minds of men, which the tendency of modern thought has effected in respect of evidence, may be summed up under two heads: First, the nature of the evidence required is altogether altered, and a great many arguments, that would in former days have gone to the jury, are now summarily suppressed. Fact can only be proved by facts, that is, by events, instances, things, which are submitted to experience and observation, and are confirmed by experiment and reason. And, secondly, the minds of the jury are subject to a priori, and, on the whole, perfectly reasonable prepossessions before