Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/489

 is required to convince us that, among the subjects principally engrossing the attention of our learned men to-day, there are some which will be looked upon by our descendants as we now look upon the rhetoric of the ancients and the scholasticism of the Middle Ages.

speech is chiefly directed against certain leaders who are trying to direct the younger generation back to religious beliefs; for M. Zola, as a champion of science, looks upon himself as their opponent; but in reality such is not the case, for his reasoning is based upon the same foundation as that of his adversaries: on faith, as he himself admits.

It is a generally received opinion that religion and science are opposed to each other. And such is really the case, but only with reference to any given time. That is to say, what has been regarded by the people of one time as science very often becomes religion for their descendants. What is usually connoted by the term religion is generally the science of the past, while that which is called science is to a large extent the religion of the present.

We say that the statements of the Hebrews that the world was created in six days, that children are punished for the sins of their fathers, that certain maladies can be cured by the sight of a serpent, are the data of religion; while we call data of science the statements of our contemporaries that the world created itself while turning around a center which is everywhere, that all the various species arose from the struggle for existence, that criminals are the product of heredity, that there exist micro-organisms in the shape of commas which cause certain diseases. It is easy to see by reverting in imagination to the state of mind of an ancient Hebrew, that for him the creation of the world in six days, the wound-curing serpent, etc., served as the data of science" at its highest degree of development, just as for a man of our