Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/439

Rh, menaces, and judgments—covering not only the world that now is, but that which is to come—it has interested me to note how trivially men seem to be influenced by what they call their religion, and how potently by that "nature" which it is the alleged province of religion to eradicate or subdue. From fair and manly argument, from the tenderest and holiest sympathy on the part of those who desire my eternal good, I pass by many gradations, through deliberate unfairness, to a spirit of bitterness which desires, with a fervor inexpressible in words, my eternal ill. Now, were religion the potent factor, we might expect a homogeneous utterance from those professing a common creed; while, if human nature be the really potent factor, we may expect utterances as heterogeneous as the characters of men. As a matter of fact we have the latter; suggesting to my mind that the common religion professed and defended by these different people is merely the accidental conduit through which they pour their own tempers, lofty or low, courteous or vulgar, mild or ferocious, holy or unholy, as the case may be. Pure abuse, however, I have deliberately avoided reading, wishing to keep, not only hatred, malice, and uncharitableness, but even every trace of irritation, far away from my side of a discussion which demands not only good temper, but largeness, clearness, and many-sidedness of mind, if it is to guide us even to provisional solutions.

At an early stage of the controversy a distinguished professor of the University of Cambridge was understood to argue—and his argument was caught up with amusing eagerness by a portion of the religious press—that my ignorance of mathematics renders me incompetent to speculate on the proximate origin of life. Had I thought his argument relevant, my reply would have been simple; for before me lies a printed document, more than twenty-two years old, bearing the signature of this same learned professor, in which he was good enough to testify that I am "well versed in pure mathematics."

In connection with his limitation of speculative capacity to the mathematician, the gentleman just referred to offered what he considered a conclusive proof of the being of a God. This solemn problem he knocked off in a single paragraph. It interests me profoundly to reflect upon the difference between the state of mind which could rest satisfied with this performance and that of the accomplished poet, and more than accomplished critic, who in "Literature and Dogma" pronounces the subject of the professor's demonstration "an unverifiable hypothesis." Whence this difference? Were the objective facts decisive, both writers would come to the same conclusion: the divergence is, therefore, to be referred to the respective subjective organs which take the outward evidence in. When I turn, as I have done from time to time for years, to the articles and correspondence in our theological journals, and try to gather from them what our religious teachers think of this universe and of each other, they seem to me to be as