Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/510

494 maintains that "the recent cry of 'the Conflict of Religion and Science' is fallacious and mischievous to the interests of science and religion, and would be most mournful if we did not believe that, in the very nature of things, it must be ephemeral. Its genesis is to be traced to the weak foolishness of some professors of religion, and to the weak wickedness of some professors of science."

On the contrary, we consider this conflict to be natural and inevitable, to be wholesome rather than mischievous; and having convulsed the world for centuries, and being still rife, with little prospect of speedy adjustment, we hardly see how it can be regarded as "ephemeral." Nor can it be much dependent upon the attributes here assigned to some of the controversialists. If the said professors of religion were brayed in a mortar until all their folly departed from them, and the said professors of science were all regenerated, the relations of the subjects would still give rise to hostility, and raise up new antagonists. No truce among the leaders can affect the deeper issues as viewed by the general mind. Something ought to be learned from experience, and that there has been a long and fierce antagonism between what has passed under the name of religion, and what has passed under the name of science, is sufficiently shown from the evidence furnished by President White. That the antagonism continues, is not because of the wrong-headedness of a few partisans who are bent upon stirring up strife, but because science is driving on with its researches, regardless of any thing but the new truth it aims to reach, while the religious world is full of anxiety and dread about what is going to happen as a consequence of this uncontrollable movement. Those who think the existing phase of the alleged conflict illusive are requested simply to consider the attitude of mind of the great mass of devout and sincerely religious people toward the more advanced scientific conclusions and scientific men of the present day. It is no test of the matter to determine how the great body of religious people now regard the science established in former times. The religious liberality of each age is put upon its trial by the questions arising in each age. In our own time biology is the branch of science that is most progressive and occupies the attention of, perhaps, the largest number of investigators who are busy inquiring about the origin of life, the antiquity of man, cerebral psychology, the laws of force manifested in living beings, and the evolution of organic forms in the course of Nature. How are such inquiries regarded by the multitude of devoutly religious people? Are they not considered "dangerous?" Are they not viewed by. this class exactly as the new doctrines in astronomy and geology were viewed by the same class in former times, that is, as hostile to faith and subversive of religion? Is there no conflict here? Are the brand of "materialism" which is put upon biological study in our times, and the charge that a materialistic science is aiming to cut up religion by the roots, indicative of harmony between these parties? Science must go on, and, if her results thus far are bad, there is no prospect that they will be better in the future. There can be only one basis of substantial peace, and that is the entire indifference of religious people, as such, to the results of scientific inquiry. This they cannot attain until far better instructed than at present; and we apprehend that it will take very considerable time to reach that desirable consummation.

proposition made three or four years ago, and due, as we understood, to Prof. Shaler, to establish a School of Natural History at Nantucket for the benefit of the teachers of the country,