Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/56

48 about to be arrived at. Religion is more and more withdrawing from the disputed territory of facts historical and physical, and saying in effect to Science: "I am no longer your rival on this ground; so now tell us freely all you know about the world and its origin, about man and his descent; tell us whence we sprang, how we have come to be as we are, with such thoughts and instincts, such hopes and fears, such aspirations and superstitions as you wot of; and what the future is to which we may look forward. Tell us if you can the raison d'être of this universe. Henceforth I shall not dispute with you one single verifiable fact; so now deliver to the world a free, untrammeled message; tell us all the truth you know." Thus challenged, Science becomes solemn under a new sense of responsibility, and its thoughtful reply might be: "I see but in part, I know but in part. I pass through my hands the successive links of a chain, but the beginning of the chain and the end are not only beyond my vision but beyond the flight of my strongest thought. I organize knowledge, I minister to the physical and intellectual wants of men; whatever a finite faculty of judgment is capable of, I may hope to accomplish; but if man has a craving to know his relation to the universe, I can not determine it; if he wants a higher motive than expediency (in the widest sense) for his actions, I can not supply it; if he craves to believe in an Infinite Goodness, I can not demonstrate it for him; if he longs for a life beyond the present, I can not assure him that such a longing will be realized. Here, then, is your province, with which I engage not to interfere; and if, while I increase man's power over the energies of physical Nature, you can raise him to a nobler self-control and a higher sense of moral dignity; if you can satisfy his emotional longings and place his whole life on something more than an empirical foundation, then shall I reverence your work and recognize that I am but your humbler yoke-fellow in the service of the race."

We have reached the limits of our space, and find that we have only dealt with one point of the book under review. In our opinion, however, it is the most important point, as being the one that was most calculated to lead the general reader astray. We should have wished to devote two or three pages to what we consider the very faulty account Mr. Kidd gives of the function of the intellect in connection with social progress; but that, if it is to be done at all, must be done some other day.

only industry in the hamlet of Nova Varos, Sandjack of Novi Bazar, is the manufacture of carpets and rugs. Every girl, on marriage, takes one or more rugs and a large painted chest to her husband. For this reason each house makes its own rugs, and each house uses what it makes.