Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/244

232 present condition of science, Why this vigorous and comprehensive effort to harmonize the already harmonious? The religious periodicals abound in discussions aiming to compose the alleged differences and discords of religion and science; and there pours from the press a continuous stream of books devoted to the same end. An impending volume of eight hundred pages is announced by a correspondent of the Evening Post, who gives an analysis of its contents, and remarks: "The conflict between science and religion as to man's origin on this planet has been so ardent, and the interest which men of culture the world over feel in the subject is so deep and growing, that I can hardly be mistaken in supposing that the readers of the Evening Post will be pleased to receive a synopsis of Mr. Southall's book, the proof-sheets of which I have been kindly permitted to examine. He combats the views of Lyell, Lubbock, Evans, Lartet, De Mortillet, Nillson, Worsaae, Désor, and others, that man is several hundred thousand years old, or, as Mr. Geikie and Mr. Boyd Dawkins, in their recent books put it, preglacial," Again: "The book will provoke a deal of criticism in scientific and religious circles. Persons far more competent than the present writer to pronounce judgment upon its merits, do not hesitate to say that it is the most important contribution yet made in America to the theological side of this weighty subject." Of course, "the theological side," which holds that there is no such thing as "the conflict between science and religion," "ardent" or otherwise, will at once proceed to squelch this superfluous writer; and when they have done so, and repudiated the folly and futility of all other books of the same class, and dried up the discussion in their periodicals, it will be time to talk to Dr. Draper about the illusiveness of the subject-matter of his history. There is something not a little ludicrous in the attitude of those who are lustily continuing a fight that is centuries old, and, when the history of it comes to be written, suddenly turn nonresistants, and protest that it is all a mistake, and that there has really never been any conflict at all! Can it be that it is because they would rather not have the history appear?

But it will be said that truth can never be in conflict with itself; that religious truth and scientific truth must harmonize, and that any apparent antagonism is due to prejudice and imperfect knowledge. Granted; but this concedes the fact of a conflict, and only proposes a theory of its cause. The harmony affirmed is not a harmony realized, but rather hoped for, as a possibility of the future, to which present broad and thorough investigation is tending; and with this we entirely agree. But the hope of a state of things yet to be reached cannot be made a ground of denial of what is, and has been. It is maintained that, at bottom, there is no real conflict between capital and labor, and many indulge the anticipation that their relations will be ultimately harmonized; but he who denies that there is now any such conflict had better spend a few days in the mining districts of Pennsylvania, where for months this conflict has threatened the peace of society. It is also held that the true and highest interest of nations is that of concord, and many think that the world will yet grow into international amity and unity; but shall we therefore deny the past existence of war, and discredit as groundless all our histories of international hostility? The case of religion and science is exactly parallel. However they may finally be brought into accord, they certainly are not in that relation now, and no antagonism of the past has been more deep and unrelenting, and more defiant of all efforts at adjustment, than this. The conflict between religion and science,