Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/96

86 in America than in England, and quite as safely. In fact, I had reason to believe that the warmth of my own welcome in America was in no small degree due to the fact that, having first proved the justice of my views, I had not been afraid to maintain them publicly against the powers that were until the proper course was adopted.

One other point remains to be noticed, the influence, namely, of religious scruples upon scientific progress and research in America. Here I must admit that I was somewhat disappointed. I expected to find America a long way in advance of England. But with some noteworthy exceptions, especially in the West, America seems to me to be behind England in this respect. It is only here and there, in England—in the Bœotian corners, so to speak, of this country—that the community opposes itself to advanced scientific ideas to the same extent as in some of the leading cities of the United States. This is partly due to two opposite influences: the Puritan element of the American population on the one hand, and the Roman Catholic element on the other. Progress, however, is being steadily made in this as in other matters. Indeed, it has been rather because America began later to bestir itself in the encouragement of free search after truth that she is at present behind England in this respect. Judging from experience in other matters, she will move rapidly now her progress has begun, and will soon occupy the position to be expected from the natural freedom and independence of the American mind. It need hardly be said that in America, as in Europe, such contest as arises from time to time between religion and science has its origin entirely from the side of religion. There as here religion (so called) attacks and denounces discoveries inconsistent with the views which the orthodox had been accustomed to advocate; and there as here, when there as no longer any choice, the orthodox quietly accept these discoveries as established facts, expressing a naive astonishment that they should ever have been thought in the least degree inconsistent with received opinions.—Advance-sheets of Popular Science Review.



HIS paper has been occasioned by the lectures of a distinguished Englishman who has visited this country; but I am to keep very much to my general subject, and not enter upon a minute criticism of Prof. Huxley. In these lectures he has abstained from entering on those exciting topics bearing on materialism and religion, which he has discussed so freely in Edinburgh and in Belfast, and in his published writings. So far the hopes of unbelievers in Scripture, and the fears 