Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/51

Rh so far as demonstrable scientific errors have been put forward as essential parts of this or that religious system. And it was not science, be it remembered, that insisted that such errors were essential to the integrity of religion; it was religion, as represented by its official expounders, that took up this position. It was not Galileo who said that religion could not exist if the Ptolemaic system of astronomy were overthrown; it was the Church. All Galileo asked was leave to establish a purely scientific theory. It was not the founders of modern geology who insisted that religion must stand or fall with belief in a six-days creation; it was their opponents, the uncompromising partisans of a traditional theology. It was not Darwin or Spencer who said that religion could not withstand the shock of the evolution theory—the latter said expressly that it could and would—it was again the party that spoke in the name of religion. If a certain number of scientific men were carried away by the vehement assertions of the champions of religion into believing and speaking as if religion itself were about to be involved in the ruin of the erroneous views which had formed part of its popular presentment, can we wonder at it? And if to-day the impression is widespread that religion has been shaken and discredited by the advance of science, on whom must the blame chiefly rest? Without doubt on those who, not distinguishing between the accidents of religion and its essence, fought a losing battle with science on matters that were wholly within the jurisdiction of the latter.

Science, Mr. Kidd says, has lost sight of the main question, which is not whether religious beliefs have "any foundation in reason," but whether they "have a function to perform in the evolution of society." This again is incorrect; science has not lost sight of this question, but on the contrary has of late years devoted a large amount of attention to it. Never was it so clearly recognized as it is to-day that beliefs may have no foundation in reason, and yet have a more or less important "function to perform in the evolution of society." The proofs of this are so abundant that it seems a waste of time to produce them. But for very specific statements take the following from Vignoli's work on Myth and Science, published in the International Scientific Series: "Man rises in the social scale by means of his superstitious and religious feelings, which act as a stimulus and symbol, so far as he subjects his animal and perverse instincts to the precepts which he imagines to be expressed by these myths" (page 106). And again (page 321), "The problem of myth is transformed into the problem of civilization." Turning to a very recent work, Mr. Havelock Ellis's The New Spirit, we find the author asking, "What is the nature of the impulse that underlies, and manifests itself in, that sun worship, Nature worship, fetich