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 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN 
 RELIGION
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
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 gestions for the Study of the Relations 
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 (Handbooks for the Clergy.) 
 
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 LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY
 
 THE 
 
 SCIENTIFIC TEMPER 
 IN RELIGION 
 
 AND OTHER ADDRESSES 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. P. N. WAGGETT, M.A. 
 
 OF THE SOCIETY OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 
 1905 
 
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 All rights reserved
 
 " A Philosopher's life is spent in discovering that of the half 
 dozen truths he knew when a child, such an one is a lie, as the world 
 states it in set terms ; and then, after a weary lapse of years and 
 plenty of hard thinking, it becomes a truth again after all, as he 
 happens to newly consider it and view it in a different relation with 
 the others." 
 
 Robert Browning 
 (Ogniben in A Soul's Tragedy, Act II.). 
 
 " Was kann der Mensch im Leben mehr gewinnen, 
 Als dass sich Gott-Natur ihni offenbare, 
 Wie sie das Feste I'asst zu Geist verrinnen, 
 Wie sie das Geisterzeugte fest bewahre." 
 
 Goethe 
 {Bei Betrachtung njon Scliiller's Schddel). 
 
 Man through his life can win no richer prize 
 Than if he God-in-nature realise : 
 How that resolves the solid into soul 
 And keeps the soul's creations ever whole." 
 
 W. H. B. 
 
 "Ex uno Verbo omnia, et unum loquitur omnia: et hoc est 
 Principixim (]uod et loquitur nobis." 
 
 De Ifnitatione Christ i, I. iii.
 
 TO MY FATHER
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The following chapters, with the exception of 
 the last, are taken from shorthand reports of 
 addresses given in St. Mark's Church, Maryle- 
 bourne, in Lent and May 1903. 
 
 The first five were reported at the time in the 
 Guardian and the Church Times, and I am much 
 obliged to the Proprietors of those Journals, both 
 for printing them then and for letting me print 
 them now. 
 
 Besides informalities, interjections, parentheses, 
 which would be avoided in a written lecture, there 
 are some features of impromptu speech which 
 are, I believe, in a measure necessary to keep a 
 number of minds moving together. They limit 
 the journey, for they greatly reduce its pace ; but 
 they make it a journey in companionship. I 
 mean the repetition of words and thoughts in 
 detail, and the frequent and full recapitulation of 
 the argument in broader lines. 
 
 Such marks of the nature of its origin I have
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 not been anxious to remove from the little book. 
 They may serve to recall to some readers the 
 intimacy which arises between generously con- 
 siderate hearers and the man whose turn it is to 
 speak ; especially perhaps when what he has to 
 say is, like Friar Brackley's sermon, " suddenly 
 said." ^ 
 
 The experiment of dealing in Church with the 
 subjects here touched was made at such hours as 
 not to interrupt the regular sermons any more 
 than the regular services. 
 
 Without further reference to the present im- 
 perfect essay, I venture to add three words about 
 the general requirements of a conference upon 
 such subjects as are here attempted. 
 
 First, such a conference is not to be used for 
 giving rudimentary instruction in natural science. 
 The topics discussed may be those known to the 
 earliest student, but the knowledge must be 
 assumed. Otherwise, the whole time available for 
 the conference upon relations will be occupied in 
 explaining one of the terms, and this under the 
 
 1 Paston Letters, i, 511 : A.D. 1460. Friar Brackley to 
 William Paston. — "Jesii mercy, marie help, cum Sanctis omnibus, 
 trewe menyng executorjs ftVo fals terrauntcs and alle tribulacyonys. 
 . . . W. Y. Judex and hise wyt were here with here meny and here 
 hors in our ladyes place . . . ami I prechid on the Sonday byfore 
 hem, not warnyd tyl after mete, and than for lak of M. Vergeant, or 
 our W^ardeyn Barnard, I sodeynly seyd the sermon."
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 worst possible conditions. The rudimentary in- 
 struction is to be done in a class-room or theatre, 
 with a blackboard, raised seats, and specimens. 
 
 The hearers of the apologetical conference will 
 be those who have the measure of information 
 required, or are willing to gain it independently. 
 
 Secondly, while the speaker assumes some 
 scientific knowledge in the hearers, the hearers 
 must assume some religious knowledge in the 
 speaker. He must not pause, or at least not 
 often or long, to prove his own orthodoxy. The 
 great doctrines of grace cannot be illustrated, 
 though indeed they may be borne in the heart, by 
 a man who is speaking of the procedure of the 
 material creation. To take, for example, a topic 
 not touched in this book : if one were speaking 
 of the nature of man, of his hereditary equipment, 
 and the means or machinery or field for free 
 choice which exists in his fixed but manifold 
 constitution, one must not be taken to describe 
 a substitute for Divine Grace. The question of 
 the origin of all good and saving motives is 
 reserved ; and attention is directed only to a part 
 of the organism in which those motives operate. 
 
 A third point is, perhaps, practically most im- 
 portant. 1 believe that, in spite of what has just 
 been said, all abstract discussions and all con- 
 siderations of material facts must be warmed and
 
 X PREFACE 
 
 refreshed by frequent returns to thoughts and 
 words of a different order ; I mean words of 
 personal appeal, of effort and aspiration, and 
 concerned with social duty — in a word with the 
 deeper knowledge which belongs to piety and 
 love. I think it may be for lack of this refresh- 
 ment that quasi-scientific Christian conferences 
 are not persevered with. For nothing can hold 
 the attention of a body of men as the simple 
 words of religion can : and we have to keep close 
 to that geniality, that encouraging sympathetic 
 temper which I think Richter speaks of as 
 belonging essentially to the sermon. 
 
 We must not hold back our spiritual appeal 
 to some last address of a course, but keep it in 
 view all along. Otherwise, the discussion, hard or 
 simple, successful or unsuccessful on its own line, 
 and even if it very completely and deftly covers a 
 certain circle of debated points, will tend to 
 evaporate and disperse that spirit of devotion for 
 the sake of which the whole effort, first and last, 
 is undertaken. 
 
 The title given to the second chapter, and 
 practically to the book, indicates a desire to 
 depart as far as possible from the initial attitude 
 of the physician in Lytton's Strange Story , who, 
 " keeping natural philosophy apart from the 
 doctrines of revelation . . , never assailed the
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 last . . . left faith to religion and banished it 
 from philosophy." 
 
 The great name of faith has too often been 
 given to a frail conjecture or an illegitimate 
 inference, supposed to afford a ' practical ' sub- 
 stitute for knowledge where knowledge cannot 
 be secured. 
 
 In thought as in action we know not well 
 which faults are " scholars' faults," such as wise 
 men " praise in hope of fruit." ^ But for this we 
 might say, let us part, at whatever present loss and 
 pain, with that mere simular of faith ; and this 
 not in order to concentrate all our trust upon the 
 impressive witness of one part of reality ; but in 
 order that, accepting experience implicitly as a 
 whole, and endeavouring perpetually to extend 
 and deepen our intimacy with its unfolding 
 lessons, we may advance towards a clearer and 
 more fruitful apprehension of its various parts, 
 and of the several functions of authority, medita- 
 tion, logic, discovery, emotion, and obedience, 
 and whatever else is found in a man's actual 
 knowledge of all that is within and beyond his 
 life. 
 
 The second motto is not given to recommend 
 
 ' "Inter flagitia . . . sunt peccata proficientiiim : quae a bene 
 judicantibus, et vituperantur ex regula perfectionis, et laudantur spc 
 frugis siciit herba segetis." — S. Augustinis Confess, Lib. III. Cap. ix.
 
 xii prefacp: 
 
 a pantheistic conception of Gott-Natur^ but only 
 to exclude the divorce of stuff and spirit which 
 gives rise to all conflicts between Science and 
 Religion. The identification of God with Nature 
 robs us of all which makes religion real, and most 
 evidently of hope. But we are free, or rather we 
 are bound, to reassert the presence and power of 
 God in Nature, so but we remember that He 
 Who sustains, also infinitely transcends, the 
 universe.^ Process does not exclude purpose ; 
 but the purpose far exceeds the process we may 
 ever discern. Stuff is not an alternative of spirit ; 
 but the spirit which energises in the very exist- 
 ence of stuff", energises also in fields of action far 
 beyond that relative existence. 
 
 The English quatrain translating Goethe is a 
 orift from the revered Master of the Charterhouse 
 
 o 
 
 to his ever-grateful subject, 
 
 P. N. W. 
 
 Westminster, 
 
 August, 1905. 
 
 ' See Appendix, p. 284.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTKK ^^^^ 
 
 I. Introductory i 
 
 II. The Scientific Temper in Religion ... 31 
 
 III. The Distribution of Problems 58 
 
 IV. The More General Effect of Evolutionary 
 
 Doctrine 82 
 
 V. Agnosticism and Determinism 105 
 
 VI. Natural Selection and Theism : The Subject 
 
 resumed 131 
 
 VII. The Bible and Evolution 1 53 
 
 VIII. Biology and our View of Human Nature . 184 
 
 IX. Spiritual Experience and Dogmatic Religion 220 
 
 X. The Aids which Science gives to the Re- 
 ligious Mind 251 
 
 Appendix. — Illustrative Passages from Paley, 
 Newton, Diderot, with a Note on the 
 
 Word "Immanence" 275
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 The situation — Reasons of the pause in controversy— The change is 
 partial and local — A truce by estrangement — What is needed 
 for a better understanding — In science a cautious temper — And 
 a recognition of its own special foundation — In religion a 
 scientific spirit. 
 
 A GOOD deal might justly be said in criticism 
 of our proposal to hold conferences during Lent 
 upon subjects and points in which religious faith 
 and practice are supposed to touch most closely 
 upon natural science ; and I am not without 
 sympathy with the critics. But we must hope 
 that the work we attempt will prove to be a work 
 of charity, and that those who share with us in it 
 may not be distracted from the more serious and 
 real pursuits of Lent, for which many opportuni- 
 ties are offered them at other times, on the Sunday 
 and in the week. 
 
 In future addresses I hope to treat of some 
 special points or regions where religion is thought 
 to touch most closely upon natural inquiry. I 
 
 B
 
 2 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 admit that at present I have hardly any idea of 
 what those subjects can properly be, and I should 
 not be ungrateful for guidance. 
 
 But to-day, before touching any special point, 
 
 it seems to be our duty to consider, so far as our 
 
 knowledge permits, what the general 
 
 The situation. . .... i i r i 
 
 Situation is in the world of thought with 
 
 regard to these matters. For everybody must be 
 
 aware, I think, that the situation has very much 
 
 changed during the last twenty, and especially 
 
 during the last ten years. There is much more 
 
 courage among Christians. The friends of the 
 
 spiritual life have been greatly reassured. There 
 
 is a larger measure of wisdom on the side which 
 
 used to be arrayed as if in opposition ^ to Christian 
 
 doctrine. But, besides those changes for the 
 
 better, there is something which certainly gives 
 
 cause for regret. What we find is that people are 
 
 not so much troubled by special criticisms urged 
 
 against special doctrines of the Faith as beset by a 
 
 general feeling of discouragement. If one may 
 
 use the words which are so commonly used in 
 
 private conversation about these things, a great 
 
 many people are not prepared to argue upon any 
 
 definite issue, but they have the sense that, with 
 
 regard to religion, the whole thing has gone for 
 
 * I use the awkward expression, ' as if in opposition,' not only 
 because the hostility of some critics was not a real hostility, but also 
 because that which they opposed was not really Christian doctrine.
 
 INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 themselves. At some later time It would be 
 useful to try to show one part, at any rate, of the 
 process by which it has come to pass that religion 
 has lost so much more in authority than can be 
 accounted for by its actual losses in debate. I 
 will not touch on this point now. At some 
 future time we may devote to it some time and 
 care. 
 
 There exists, then, in Individuals scattered 
 amongst us, an indistinct conviction that the whole 
 thing, as they express it, has gone ; and it is plainly 
 very difficult to deal with such a state of opinion 
 as this. When the debate raged very briskly, and, 
 month after month, in half the monthly magazines ; 
 when we were constantly entertained by the clash 
 of arms between aged statesmen and distinguished 
 morphologists, then we could take up a particular 
 point, and we were immensely encouraged on one 
 side or the other by winning a point for our side. 
 But you cannot by such means build up a soul 
 which is oppressed with a sense of blankness in 
 the whole spiritual outlook, and has lost sight of 
 the wider world of moral and spiritual realities. 
 That is a case not for argument, but for some- 
 thing much more like therapeutic treatment. 
 Let us ask ourselves first how that change has 
 come to pass. Why Is It that the debate has 
 come to an end ? Certainly it is not because we 
 have settled all our questions.
 
 4 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 There are, we may say, three main reasons. 
 The first, which looms very large but is not 
 Reasons of actually most important, is that there 
 
 the pause ini i .• j'^i. c 
 
 contro- nave been certain readjustments or 
 versy. thought on the part of orthodoxy. The 
 
 frame and shape of religious statement is different 
 from what it was before the great storm of the 
 last half of the nineteenth century began ; and 
 the difference is due in part to the influence of 
 science. Much more important is the fact that 
 natural science is in a thoroughly vigorous con- 
 dition at present, and is consequently deeply 
 occupied with its own problems ; and there has 
 been, moreover, an immense increase in the range 
 over which natural investigation extends. An 
 increase immense indeed ! This is not the time 
 to illustrate the growth of which I speak, but 
 the result of such an increased range of observa- 
 tion is a much broader judgement, for instance, 
 with regard to the nature of human life. And 
 this is especially important because, both for 
 technical philosophy and for thought in general, 
 psychology is the absorbing study of our time. 
 The wider range of study and the more broadly 
 based judgement have resulted in an increased 
 spirit of caution — caution both with regard to 
 negative conclusions which at one time men were 
 ready to draw very hastily, and caution, also, of 
 a more hopeful kind. For, in fact, there are two
 
 INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 kinds of caution, the caution which makes a man 
 unwilling to take strong measures because he fears 
 he may soon be poorer, and the happier caution 
 which makes a man unwilling to build his house 
 of brick because, if he waits, he may soon be 
 able to build it of marble. We know, in certain 
 respects, so much more than we did twenty 
 years ago, that men are inclined to say, " Let 
 us be in no hurry to add up our total and 
 strike the balance, because we may soon be much 
 richer than we are." We are not so easily content 
 as we used to be with short formulae and phrases 
 describing human nature ; and we are a thousand 
 miles from that confident materialism in philosophy 
 which used, one might almost say, to rule in 
 certain regions of learning and research. Things 
 are different now. Materialism in the philo- 
 sophical sense of the word — the materialism, for 
 instance, of Buchner, whose books still sell by 
 thousands — is not a thing against which meta- 
 physics or idealism makes at present a stout fight. 
 It is a thing of the past in any academic region 
 you like to name in England or in Germany. 
 There has been, then, a considerable change in 
 the spirit of that opposite camp which was in the 
 habit of speaking in the name of natural science. 
 " In the name," we must say, because it is not 
 natural science which is concerned with attacking 
 our faith, but a certain school of religious thought
 
 6 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 which speaks against another school of religious 
 thought, namely the Christian, with the pretended 
 authority of natural science. We ought, for 
 instance, to think of Professor Huxley, in this 
 connexion, as a religious teacher. It is not science 
 itself which is hostile to Christianity, but a certain 
 school of philosophy and religion which speaks in 
 the name of science. 
 
 There are, then, these two changes : first, the 
 readjustments in expression made by theology ; 
 secondly, the native vigour, the preoccupation 
 with their own problems, the greater philosophic 
 caution, of the schools of natural science. 
 
 Thirdly, there has been a great change for us. 
 We also are much more fully occupied with other 
 things. We have grave difficulties of our own 
 within the Church, some of them indeed of 
 quite a material kind ; and even where the ques- 
 tion is of theology itself, we see that theology 
 has been so busy in modifying and guarding 
 and checking the rapid advances of what are 
 known as critical studies that there has been no 
 time to consider whether or not the creed had 
 a quarrel with philosophical materialism, or with 
 the evolutionary interpretation of the world. We 
 have been very much occupied with another class 
 of debate. Almost the whole field of the theolo- 
 gical consciousness has been taken up with the 
 work of meeting, encouraging, modifying, checking,
 
 INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 and resisting, or again of guiding into hopeful 
 
 channels, and seeking to express in fair forms, 
 
 the results, on the one hand, of critical research, 
 
 and, on the other, of religious self-inspection. 
 
 We have, that is to say, been living through the 
 
 period of Biblical studies ; and we are now living in 
 
 the period of Ritschlian theology, which asks us to 
 
 consider what religion is before or even without 
 
 inquiring for its historical supports. Men are 
 
 much too hard at work in adjusting our new ideas of 
 
 what religion is with the old words which already 
 
 enshrine them, to be keenly interested about 
 
 dangers supposed to arise from friction between 
 
 the Bible record and the discoveries of natural 
 
 science. 
 
 These three things have made a great change 
 on what you might, without intending any 
 offence to other regions, call the upper _ 
 
 ° ' -n 1 ^^^ change 
 
 regions of educated thought. But the is partial 
 
 ° , ° . , and local. 
 
 change has been very partial, very 
 local. While we have been so happy in our 
 truce, and have been pressing forward our own 
 proper studies without quarrelling with one 
 another, in other places the state of things has 
 been quite different. There are questions which 
 we do not pretend to have solved, but the diffi- 
 culties of which we manage to bear with in our own 
 life. We know that these still demand an answer ; 
 but though we continue to seek the answer we
 
 8 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 can work without It for the present. But these 
 questions come before other sections of the com- 
 munity as if they were the latest and the most 
 important. Take, for example, the case men- 
 tioned just now — the teaching of Biichner, or 
 the teaching of Haeckel. In schools of meta- 
 physical argument, men are not concerned any 
 more about the contention, for example, that the 
 mind secretes thought in the same way as our other 
 organs secrete their various contributions to health. 
 That famous phrase of Vogt's about thought and 
 the bile was, we all recognize, a piece of rhetoric. 
 A sensible man only needs a little time to see 
 that it does not mean anything in particular. It 
 sounds as if it were an important analogy, but it 
 is Impossible to attach any clear or distinct notion 
 to the words. That is recognized. But the 
 writings of these extreme materialists, who speak 
 in the name of biology, sell by thousands still, I 
 have been told, all over Germany and, so far as 
 we are a reading people, to a great extent In 
 England also ; and they are put Into cheap forms, 
 and thus reach quite new levels of the reading 
 public. You have to remember that In the last 
 twenty years a whole nation has newly come Into 
 possession of the art of reading ; and It has been 
 stirred up, by these comparatively confined in- 
 quiries In natural science. Into the delightful 
 sense of sharing In speculative activity. And so
 
 INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 you will find that some very popular journals 
 among us, some of those that appeal to the 
 earnest, progressive, radical and socialist working 
 man, are beginning of late to deal with these 
 problems, and to put before their readers just 
 those crude and hasty conclusions which, in such 
 regions as you are familiar with, have been 
 to a considerable extent analysed by reflexion, 
 so that a part is assimilated in peaceable union 
 with older elements of teaching, and a part is put 
 on one side as, at any rate, unsatisfactory. They 
 are now again put forward in their primary un- 
 criticlsed form as brilliant discoveries capable of 
 excluding the necessity of religion. We might 
 further illustrate this by examples from all parts 
 of the world. I came across an African chief 
 who was defying his missionary on grounds which 
 he drew from what he had heard about the evo- 
 lutionary hypothesis. In China and Japan at 
 present, you get, we are informed, the quarrels 
 which used to occupy us between 1870 and 1880. 
 The peace, then, is very partial, and if we 
 feel the claim of charity we must wish ourselves 
 to grow in clear understanding of the sources 
 of our own security and faith, so that we may 
 not fail to do our part — and there is a part for 
 us — in reassuring and building up the faith of 
 others, and in keeping open the way for religious 
 faith among those who are, in certain respects, in
 
 lo THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 the relation of younger brothers to us. For they 
 are now meeting, in astonishment and distress, 
 with difficulties which, as I have repeatedly said 
 already, we do not see how to dispose of, but 
 which, for certain good reasons of which it will 
 be our business to speak, we find ourselves 
 obliged to put up with and able to manage. 
 For the trouble is not that the positive proofs 
 of religion are wanting, but that, by being too 
 much occupied with details, men's souls are 
 gradually brought into a condition in which they 
 are unable to be aware of and to appreciate the 
 great world of life — of spiritual life, experience, 
 struggle, duty, and victory — which lies around 
 them. 
 
 A word more about the state of truce which, 
 
 as I said, exists in the upper regions of educated 
 
 life. That truce is not altogether a 
 
 A truce by . '^ - 
 
 estrange- happy One. It IS not a truce or men 
 who, standing face to face, have 
 grasped each other's hands. It is much more 
 truly a truce of men who, despairing of one 
 another as unreasonable, have turned their backs 
 upon those who disagree with them ; who feel 
 that there is no possibility of coming to terms 
 with certain other forms of thought, and are 
 going forward with their own work. Even such a 
 truce for separated work is far better than standing 
 still in perpetual debate, but it is not quite a
 
 INTRODUCTORY ii 
 
 happy state of things ; and it lays the foundation, 
 quite possibly, for terrible disappointments later 
 on. 
 
 For a practical purpose it may be worth while 
 to consider some of its features. In the first place 
 we may turn to the religious side ; and indeed 
 with the religious side we may group, to a very 
 large extent, in this affair, the side of general 
 culture, literature, and poetry. It is not only 
 the religious men, it is not only the theologians, 
 who are inclined to despair of naturalism. It is 
 the cultured people, the poets, the historians, the 
 literary men. Men drawn from all these ranks 
 feel that its recent extraordinary assurance has 
 put naturalism out of court. They say to them- 
 selves, " Whatever is true, certainly conclusions 
 like those which were pressed upon us between 
 1870 and 1880 are not true." And why? 
 Because not only do they conflict with certain 
 developements of religious thought ; but if they 
 are of any strength at all, if they are to obtain 
 any kind of victory, they are bound to exclude the 
 very minimum of a free view of life. For naturalism 
 in order to be, as a fighting force, worth its salt, in 
 order to set out in life as a philosophical system, 
 has to make a large postulate. It has to insist 
 that the world which is presented to our senses 
 is a complete and closed sphere of existence, that 
 there are no intrusions into it ; and that, although
 
 12 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 It contains regions not yet explored, in itself it is a 
 whole ultimately homogeneous throughout. The 
 foundation-axiom of natural science — and if I have 
 time I shall show that we have no quarrel with 
 this as an axiom of science — is the uniformity of 
 nature, is the indestructibility of force, is the idea 
 that you can never get more into the world than 
 there was always in it. The world in the view 
 of natural science — and it is perfectly just as an 
 abstracted, special view of the world for a par- 
 ticular purpose — the naturalist view of the world 
 is that it consists of a certain fixed quantity of 
 matter and of force and of reality ; it is a self-closed 
 sphere. Such a view not only excludes our con- 
 ception of heaven, judgement, resurrection, or 
 some particular interpretation of the miracles in 
 the Gospels, but it also excludes any conception 
 whatever of moral freedom as such. It is im- 
 possible to insert into a truly consistent naturalist 
 view of existence anything which can properly be 
 called a belief in freedom. Such a belief would 
 upset the whole conception. Men are therefore 
 now able to see that they will have to pay much 
 more for an exclusively scientific point of view, for 
 a peace in that sense with science, than they ever in- 
 tended to pay. And although certain statements of 
 religion are beset with many difl^culties and much 
 uncertainty, yet men will not contemplate the 
 purchase of peace with science by the dogmatic
 
 INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 denial of these statements altogether. The price 
 is too high. But no lower price will serve ; for 
 pure and exclusive naturalism breaks down entirely 
 as a philosophical view, as a conception of the 
 world, as soon as you have the smallest hint of a 
 doubt whether the world in itself is a complete 
 closed sphere — as soon as you have an inkling of a 
 question whether there may not be, perhaps, more 
 in God than there is in the world which He made. 
 We must, for a naturalistic peace, give up such 
 questionings ; and very few people of ordinary 
 culture, very few men who know much about their 
 own hearts, very few of those who are led to 
 consider the mystery of human will, the extra- 
 ordinary reality of the joys of virtue — few artists, 
 few among those who write plays, who know the 
 absorbing interest of moral problems and who see 
 that morality cannot retain any genuine interest on 
 a strictly mechanical view of existence — few human 
 beings in whom human nature is quick and articu- 
 late, are now willing to close with the naturalist 
 view as a consistent philosophy. There has been, 
 therefore, some tendency to estrangement between 
 naturalism and culture in general. 
 
 And in particular the religious men know that 
 they are engaged in a great work, like that old hero 
 of the Bible who refused to come down to speak 
 with Sanballat and his friends because he was 
 building the city of God. In the same way a man
 
 14 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 who has any religious experience at all, who knows 
 anything of the movement of prayer, who knows 
 the agonies of repentance, who knows the strife 
 of self-improvement, who knows the attraction of 
 the Lord — such a man as this is sure that he is 
 surrounded by the realities of a great life. He 
 says, " I am about a great work and I cannot come 
 down. While you asked me to believe that this 
 or that phrase in the Bible was not true, I might 
 in a desire to justify my trust in the Bible turn to 
 answer you. But it appears now that nothing of this 
 kind will satisfy you. Your system, as a system, is 
 an impossible one, whether its conclusion be what 
 is called naturalism — that is to say, the dogmatic 
 assertion that the world is an independent reality 
 complete in itself — or whether the conclusion 
 be what is called agnosticism, namely, the dog- 
 matic assertion that we cannot know otherwise." 
 For agnosticism is not merely a new name for 
 scepticism ; it is the positive and dogmatic assertion 
 that we cannot know. Whichever of these two 
 conclusions be the one towards which the naturalist 
 system of philosophy moves, it is one which the 
 religious man can rule out for certain at the out- 
 set ; and he therefore says, " It is waste of time 
 for me to bargain with you about this or that 
 concession, because I know that, on the whole, 
 you have taken up a position which for me is an 
 impossible one." The religious man, therefore.
 
 INTRODUCTORY 15 
 
 turns away in despair from studies which, pre- 
 tending to sketch out for us a plan of the universe, 
 land us in a scheme which excludes the greater 
 part of human consciousness. 
 
 On the other hand, the naturalist — by which 
 
 in this connexion we do not mean the student of 
 
 the forms and ways of animals and plants, but the 
 
 upholder of a special scheme of philosophy which 
 
 is supposed to have the particular authority of 
 
 natural science at its back — looks upon certain 
 
 developements of religious life which he thinks, 
 
 and perhaps justly, to be unreasonable ; he sees 
 
 this or that special statement which has been 
 
 drawn out of ancient creeds ; and he is struck by 
 
 one or another dogmatic assertion which he finds 
 
 to be quite out of tune with his own knowledge 
 
 of what the world really is : or he comes across 
 
 that stranger perversion of the believing temper 
 
 which is content to be ignorant about the world 
 
 in which we live, the temper in which men seem 
 
 to think that the interest of religion is the opposite 
 
 of the interest of science, that its security depends 
 
 upon seeing how many difficulties and how many 
 
 discrepancies there are in natural science. This 
 
 disgusts and chills the naturalist, and he says, 
 
 " If the spirit of faith produces this credulity, or 
 
 if the spirit of faith produces this intolerance and 
 
 this obscurantism — this preference for darkness 
 
 over light — then, judging of its nature by its
 
 i6 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 fruits, I will have nothing to do, at any rate, with 
 any organized community of effort with regard to 
 faith. I will draw back from any self-committal 
 to these inward stirrings of my nature lest they 
 land me in an irrational position." 
 
 The religious man, I say, sees his minimum just 
 as much required from him as his maximum, and 
 therefore withholds his assent altogether from 
 naturalist teaching. The other man fixes his eye 
 chiefly upon the maximum or upon the special 
 developements of religious practice, and in recoil 
 from these he may desert all creeds, even that 
 of naturalism, and fall back upon what is, after 
 all, very comforting and easy — the position that 
 we do not know anything beyond our own im- 
 mediate circle, and that we had better occupy 
 ourselves between the cradle and the grave in 
 investigating the threads of knowledge that lie 
 near to us, and in trying to improve the practice 
 of mankind, not for long and distant issues, but 
 for the increase of comfort and of health and 
 of security of movement. 
 
 Now, what do we need in order to remedy 
 
 this disease of estrangement } The estrangement 
 
 is very dangerous. In the state of 
 
 What is / & 
 
 needed for estrangement we push forward on our 
 
 abetter ° ,. ^ 
 
 under- Separate lines to very remote and com- 
 
 ' ^' plicated developements. And when once 
 
 sceptical thought, tired of literary studies, turns
 
 INTRODUCTORY 17 
 
 again to occupy the ground of attack afforded by 
 natural history, it will come upon a Church more 
 than ever unprepared, and it will speak in a 
 language more than ever unintelligible to us ; so 
 that we shall be thrown again into one of those 
 unreasoning panics which must always take place 
 from time to time in a Church which does not 
 regard its position in a physical world as a 
 serious thing, a serious part of the truth of 
 God ; which turns away from what is really dis- 
 covered about this world as if it were of no 
 consequence. 
 
 In order to avoid the recurrence of disturbances, 
 two preparations seem necessary. First, I think 
 we must pay a more serious regard to the study 
 of physical facts and of our own position in the 
 scale of physical being, and we must endeavour to 
 learn what that position really is ; but the en- 
 deavour must be made with the caution which 
 refuses all decisive conclusions upon premisses 
 which are of necessity incomplete. Truth, of this 
 kind^ at any rate, will not be reached per saltum^ 
 by leaps and bounds. And on the other hand 
 it is necessary — but here I touch what lies apart 
 from our work to-day — to plant our faith upon 
 its own proper foundations. The security of 
 that faith must not rest upon our ability to 
 come to terms with this or the other assertion 
 with rejxard to the outward frame of things. Such
 
 1 8 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 a method will always lead us into alternations of 
 unjustified confidence and causeless fear. Knowing 
 in ourselves that religious certainty cannot be 
 obtained by looking simply on the world without, 
 we must be diligent in making our way clear to 
 the real sources of conviction, to those things 
 which can alone bring verification to the hypo- 
 thesis of faith, which can alone justify the enter- 
 prise, the experiment, which faith is — namely, the 
 experiences of grace. It is these alone which can 
 ever bring to a conclusion the argument of faith. 
 We need, that is to say, on our own side what 
 I shall venture to call a truly scientific spirit. 
 
 Presently we may consider this spirit at 
 
 more leisure ; but before doing so, let me say a 
 
 word about what I think is needed 
 
 In science 
 
 a cautious also on the Other side. We must say 
 ' needed ' rather than * wanting ' ; for 
 indeed this need of science is answered by a 
 gift which in many quarters grows apace. That 
 gift is a cautious, a reverent spirit in science. 
 I spoke of it just now ; it is a sense of the 
 mystery of things. And, to speak in terms of 
 mere thought and argument, it is the recognition 
 that in order for science to make any solid pro- 
 gress it is obliged to limit itself. It must always 
 be an abstracted effort of thought. Sometimes 
 Christian controversialists complain of science 
 because of its narrow outlook. But this surely
 
 INTRODUCTORY 19 
 
 is a mistake. It is the very condition of science 
 to have a narrow outlook. Limitation is its charter. 
 It is the only way in which it does practical work. 
 It can never make any progress except by funda- 
 mental, axiomatic limitations and by the exclusion 
 of inappropriate methods. Chemistry, in order 
 to advance, must exclude all question of the 
 vegetable origin, for example, of certain produc- 
 tions. It distinguishes them as vegetable in 
 nature, but it does not concern itself with the 
 process of vegetable growth. It looks upon a 
 vegetable alkaloid as a thing which is to be the 
 subject only of a particular kind of inquiry — 
 namely, that of chemical analysis. And in the 
 same way you may go through the whole series 
 of the sciences, and show how each one of 
 them has its solidity and worth and success only 
 by way of turning away its eyes, with respect 
 to the object which it investigates, from all 
 but a special class of the attributes of that 
 object. 
 
 Science is necessarily a limited process, having 
 abstraction for its basis. This is, in the first place, 
 evidently true of any particular discipline ^^^ ^ recog- 
 in science. For example, the chemist is "^""gpeci^i 
 not concerned, except for identification, foundation, 
 with the delightful glow and colour of the 
 solutions he investigates ; the glow and the 
 colour, which are the very qualities in them
 
 20 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 which would interest a painter. But further, as 
 each particular discipline in science has abstraction, 
 limitation, selection of effort, as the foundation ot 
 its success, so it is with regard to the whole activity 
 which we describe in general as science, the effort 
 to arrive at truth by the collection and arrange- 
 ment of a number of particular facts secured to us 
 by the action of the senses. This also, which is 
 science in its broadest expression, has abstraction, 
 limitation, for its charter and for its character ; and 
 here is no matter of reproach. It is absurd to 
 complain of science because it does not include 
 those fields of thought of which I spoke just now. 
 There could be no natural science at all unless 
 we regarded the world as a uniform system of 
 sequences from which nothing could ever really 
 be taken, and to which nothing could ever even- 
 tually be added — growth being always the unfold- 
 ing of stuff and force which are already present in 
 the undeveloped. But we must recognize our pro- 
 cess of abstraction. And, while it is absurd for those 
 who differ from us to complain of our abstraction, 
 we who care for science must on our own part, 
 when we have made the abstraction, take note of 
 it and allow for it. If we omit this recognition, 
 this discounting calculation, we fall into error. 
 We make certain limitations in order to arrive 
 at conclusions. Then we take those conclusions 
 away from the special thought-conditions in
 
 INTRODUCTORY 21 
 
 which they are true, and propose that they shall 
 be held valid beyond that very barrier which we 
 built up in order that we might manufacture 
 them. We cannot manufacture our conclusions 
 except inside the precise barrier that we have 
 made. But the conclusions once obtained, we 
 go outside our barrier and offer them in the 
 market, or push them, it may rather be said, 
 down men's throats, in a region which is plainly 
 outside those very artificially limited lines, the 
 creation of which and the agreement upon which 
 was the first necessity in order that science might 
 make its initial step.^ 
 
 Perhaps this intelkciua/ recognition of the limits 
 of method is equivalent, or at least something 
 closely parallel, to the characteristic of temper of 
 which we already spoke. In terms of temper, 
 what we desire is reverence, caution, kindness, 
 toleration, patience, and these good things we 
 thankfully acknowledge to be daily growing, at 
 least on the scientific or naturalist side of any line 
 of division we could draw. 
 
 And side by side with this — perhaps, as I have 
 said, the very same thing described as a character- 
 istic of thought — there is the growing recognition 
 (for it does grow) of that which long ago was 
 perpetually urged by preachers and philosophers ; 
 for example, by Canon Holland, who eloquently 
 
 ' See Appendix, p. 279.
 
 22 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 invited men to see this truth twenty years ago. 
 What was then urged by theologians now gains 
 acceptance in the minds of persons who are in- 
 terested in natural science, as appears, for instance, 
 in a book which many of us have seen, Mr. 
 Wells' Anticipations^ which, although a popular 
 book, is based upon exact knowledge and written 
 by a man of something like genius. Mr. Wells 
 anticipates that science will be recognized as an 
 abstract, specially but legitimately manufactured, 
 a view of life deliberately limited ; and that side 
 by side with it men will continue to cherish what 
 may be described, perhaps, as the practical, general 
 prima facie view of life. For we are coming to see 
 again the value, the lawfulness, and the authenticity 
 of the prima facie view of life. We are not so 
 readily frightened as we were out of what we 
 know naturally — the general effect which the 
 world of experience has upon us — by the name 
 of some minute and abstruse analysis of the 
 machinery which lies behind that great effect. 
 The same truth has been urged upon us by Mr. 
 Haldane in his book The Pathway to Reality. 
 But Mr. Haldane is a metaphysician, and in meta- 
 physics the obvious has always been respected. 
 The happy change which we note is that the 
 philosophic temper, with its regard for ordinary 
 experience, is becoming characteristic of those who 
 are specially devoted to the technical analysis of
 
 INTRODUCTORY 23 
 
 nature ; that the followers of natural science are 
 more and more free from naturalism. 
 
 We turn to the side of tradition, of faith, of 
 religion. If in science we need, and , ,. . 
 
 t> 'In religion 
 
 welcome, a spirit and a method of a scientific 
 
 patience ; on the side of religion we 
 
 need and ought to show a more truly scientific 
 
 temper. 
 
 And now, although I have already kept you 
 longer than I ought, and longer than I shall 
 again, I will venture to say one or two words 
 about the scientific temper in religion ; and briefly, 
 because we may return to this subject another time. 
 
 This temper will not be simply a respect 
 towards natural science on the part of religious 
 people, though this also ought to grow. It will 
 not be simply an anxiety to bring our truths, the 
 things which maintain our life, into actual tune 
 with the discoveries of the world outside. We 
 shall be patient about that. We shall come to 
 know — we ought to know if we think the matter 
 over — that there is a necessary want of con- 
 tinuity, an inevitable gap ; that there must be an 
 interval when two kinds of knowledge which are 
 both of them growings exist in the same mind, or in 
 the same world of minds. If both science and 
 religion had reached home they ought to come 
 home to one point. But ex hypothesi neither of 
 them has so reached home. They are both of them
 
 24 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 growing, both of them developing, both of them 
 learning, one of them confessedly growing rapidly, 
 and casting behind it every ten years conclusions 
 which were thought to be certain. Both are 
 imperfect, though they grow. Both are far from 
 their end, though they advance. That is to say, 
 they are forms of knowledge which we cannot 
 expect to find in complete accord. But we must 
 say more than this. 
 
 Not only may we be well content when we 
 find them still out of tune with one another ; 
 but we ought to be positively alarmed at any 
 appearance of unbroken agreement between them. 
 If what professed to be science coincided along 
 the whole line with what professed to be religion, 
 we ought to be sure either that what we had 
 hold of as a science was not really science, or 
 that what we had hold of as religion was not 
 really religion. It is, on general grounds, im- 
 possible for two kinds of knowledge, both of 
 which are in the course of growing, to be at any 
 moment of their growth coincident along a line 
 at more than scattered points in an individual con- 
 sciousness, or in a world of minds, which is the 
 subject or which is the acquirer of the two kinds 
 of knowledge. I venture to beg you to think of 
 this very carefully. I submit that when we find 
 discrepancies between that which we learn from 
 the Bible and our own souls, and that which we
 
 INTRODUCTORY 25 
 
 learn from the microscope or from speculation, we 
 ought not to consider such a discovery a cause 
 for lamentation ; on the contrary, it gives what is 
 essentially needed for our reassurance that we have 
 hold of real clues. The religion that was nothing 
 but a system in tune with science would be no 
 religion ; and the science that was nothing but a 
 system in tune with religion would be no science. 
 In either case we should be listening to an echo. 
 The so-called religion would be only an abstract of 
 natural knowledge, possibly "warmed by emotion." 
 And the science would be a mere republication in 
 another voice of some story imposed upon mankind 
 by ecclesiastical authority. 
 
 What is true of coincidence is true also, with 
 a difference, of continuity. A want of continuity 
 between the different parts of our knowledge seems 
 to be a necessary accompaniment of all develope- 
 ment of intellectual life. And we must be patient 
 under it, and we must not take it to be itself 
 any sign that either part is untrue. Their want 
 of continuity, of course, will not by itself show them 
 to be true ; but it will not by itself show them 
 to be false. On the contrary — and this is the point 
 — if we have, in two sections of inquiry, sound 
 and honest reason to suppose that, without being 
 infallible, we are yet finding our way according to 
 some genuine correspondence with the facts, then 
 the failure to see the two lines of knowledge
 
 26 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 drawn close together and buckled to a circle, so 
 far from giving us alarm, will be recognized as 
 the necessary result of the coexistence of two real 
 forms of knowledge in a growing state within a 
 single consciousness. 
 
 By the religious scientific spirit, then, the 
 spirit of science in religion, I do not mean just 
 now the spirit of profound respect for those 
 wonderful studies which science specially presses 
 on for the benefit of us all ; nor, secondly, do 
 I mean by it the fretful and anxious desire to trans- 
 late the divine facts of salvation into terms, say, of 
 psychology; nor yet a fear and distress because there 
 are some things belonging to belief and which we 
 find ourselves believing, but of which, neverthe- 
 less, science can give no account. In this matter, 
 I may interject, there is a curious want of con- 
 sistency. Formerly we used to disparage religion 
 if science was able to account for it. Nowadays 
 we disparage religion because science is unable to 
 account for it. It seems to me that we cannot 
 have the advantage of both of these positions, and 
 I submit, for my part, that the failure of explana- 
 tion should not tell either against science or arainst 
 religion, and that we must be content with a want 
 of continuity in the knowledge that we really 
 possess. 
 
 We are quite content with such a want of 
 continuity between the different parts of our natural
 
 INTRODUCTORY 27 
 
 knowledge. For example, in a perfect scheme of 
 science we should like to see the study of masses, 
 weights, and dimensions, and then the study of 
 movements ranged in order, so as to become the 
 basis without any gap for further studies upon the 
 interior molecular movements within bodies which 
 in the view of mechanics are considered as wholes, 
 and without reference to any changes within them. 
 We should like to see the mechanical investiga- 
 tion of masses going up without any break, until it 
 could become the mathematics of interior molecular 
 vibration. We should like, that is, to see all 
 these movements which are at the root of chemical 
 attraction, of light, heat, electricity, and Hertzian 
 vibration, ranged in a steady line from the bottom 
 to the top, and capable always of being related to 
 the larger movements of sensible masses. Further, 
 we should like to see the intimate knowledge of 
 the vibration of substances within themselves, and 
 those investigations which are directed towards 
 the discovery of the ultimate constitution of 
 matter linked on, either through chemistry or 
 some other study, to the lower margin, the basis, 
 the initial axioms of physiology. We should like 
 to explain the action of cells, the action of the 
 bodily fluids, the action of nerves in terms of 
 chemistry and physics. 
 
 And if we were impatient of all discontinuity 
 we should refuse to begin our physiology till we
 
 28 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 had finished our mechanical studies. Is this 
 the course actually followed ? Everybody knows 
 with what astonishing rapidity those studies of 
 molecular movement have advanced during quite 
 recent years. And remember, the very rapidity 
 of their advance, with the enormous change that 
 has quite lately taken place in our whole con- 
 ception of them, shows that they are capable of 
 immense further advances. When a thing is 
 motionless we can suppose it to be permanently 
 motionless. But when we see it in motion we 
 cannot tell how far it will go. For all that extra- 
 ordinary advance, everybody knows that there is 
 a gap entirely unbridged between the utmost 
 speculations and the ultimate conclusions of 
 molecular physics, and the most rudimentary 
 foundations of physiological science. Do men 
 put off proceeding with their physiology till they 
 have made the junction ? They have secure hold 
 of some certainties with regard to life, and, therefore, 
 although they cannot explain what life is in itself, 
 they push on with an amazing rapidity and 
 success and with astonishing earnestness and 
 devotion in their studies of the behaviour of life. 
 It would not be difficult to mention, if it were 
 proper, certain instances of an activity which puts 
 ours in the world to shame. For, in fact, science is 
 a kind of Church pressing on with rare diligence and 
 devotion and earnestness and with amazing success
 
 INTRODUCTORY 29 
 
 along its path of discovery. But it does all this in 
 spite of the fact that large portions of its knowledge 
 lie scattered like the unshaped timbers of a forest 
 under the axe, not fastened each to each to form 
 a structure. The facts won with so much effort 
 may have no term in common except such bare 
 axioms as this — that what is real is real, that the 
 world indeed exists, that law is uniform. Even 
 the conception of cause has now for a long time 
 been upon its trial. Many speak only of sequences. 
 Things happen one after another ; that is matter 
 of observation. But the notion that one makes 
 the other happen is not in all quarters now held 
 to be one to which science may be committed. 
 
 And, notwithstanding all this want of continuity, 
 see how real is the advance of knowledge. It 
 marches in spite of all drawbacks. And the un- 
 mistakable reality, the vital importance of its march, 
 is a full answer to all speculative difficulties, in so far 
 as these difficulties are proposed as detracting from 
 the validity and the essential justice of scientific 
 inquiry. . . . 
 
 To-day we have spent time over questions 
 which are thought to be apart from religion. Some 
 day we ought to consider the clearly religious side 
 of life, to speak about other discoveries, other 
 realities, other trials, and another call to earnestness, 
 and so in part redress the balance. Meanwhile 
 the analogy of the different and discrepant
 
 30 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 branches of natural knowledge supports what 
 has been said of the wider discrepancy between 
 faith and natural knowledge as a whole. We 
 have hold — we cannot tell how — of two bands 
 of knowledge not different in essential nature 
 so far as each is real; but different in many 
 respects and especially in the direction in which 
 we seem to find them. They are strong bands ; 
 and the fact that they do not wholly meet, but 
 show an interval which we call disagreement, is 
 not of itself ?i reason for distrusting either part of 
 our knowledge. We ought, if our vocation is to 
 the special study of nature, to work hard at this 
 study. W^ith a higher obligation still, we ought — 
 and it is the vocation of every man — to see that, by 
 the grace of God, we are gathering the facts and 
 pushing on with the industry, which will enable 
 each man to build up in himself a great structure 
 of practical certainty with regard to the things of 
 the soul, and of eternity, and of God.
 
 II 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 Recapitulation — The scientific spirit in religion — A scientific age 
 — The subject resumed : psychical research — Fluctuations in 
 scientific opinion — The adventure of science : I. In specula- 
 tion. Theory and verification. II. Adventure in actual dis- 
 covery. ; III. Adventure in the ordinary discipline of science — 
 Authority and personal assurance — The parallel state in religion 
 — The place which belongs to action. 
 
 "We glory in tribulations also; knowing that tribulation worketh 
 patience ; anH patience, experience ; and experience, hope ; and hope 
 maketh not ashamed ; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts 
 by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." — Rom. v. 3-5. 
 
 I READ these words as representative of what 1 
 have been accustomed in my own mind to call the 
 scientific spirit in religion. 
 
 Before we resume the course of thought begun 
 last Sunday, I have two remarks to make. First, 
 I have received some advice which is very valuable, 
 and which I hope to be able to act upon later. 
 But we must at present follow the thought that we 
 touched last Sunday ; and even if it happens that 
 we do not during Lent arrive at any of those par- 
 ticular difficulties which reach us from the scientific
 
 32 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 world of thought, yet we shall be doing here what 
 is absolutely necessary as a preparation for any 
 wise thought about particulars, and, moreover, a 
 work worth doing for its own sake. 
 
 The second thing that I wish to say is that we 
 are dealing with a very large range of subjects, 
 and in consequence every word spoken suggests a 
 fresh train of thought and illustration which one 
 would like to enter upon. The task of selection 
 is difficult, and it is necessary to put a curb upon 
 one's tongue. Therefore, I will beg you to con- 
 sider that silence does not imply a disregard of the 
 things about which one is silent. We have to 
 make sure of touching some things which, to me 
 at any rate, appear specially important, but by 
 directing attention upon these things we do not 
 in the smallest degree imply that the multitude of 
 other things which remain unsaid are unimportant 
 or untrue. For example, the criticism of material- 
 ism as such on purely philosophical grounds is a 
 work which is probably by far the most important 
 of all works of the mere intelligence, and the most 
 important intellectual safeguard and support which 
 the Christian possesses. When we do not touch 
 upon it, or when we dismiss it in order to arrive, by 
 contrast with it, at the description of another method 
 of strengthening our faith, it is not implied that in 
 the view taken of the world of thought, that criti- 
 cism is in itself either unimportant or unsuccessful.
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 33 
 
 Next, let us briefly recapitulate what was 
 said last Sunday. We said that there was a 
 measure of estrangement between some Recapituia- 
 of those who are specially attached to the *^'°"' 
 study of nature, and some of those who are at- 
 tached to and who are pressing on in the Christian 
 life. Here is certainly one of the incomplete 
 statements of which I spoke. We are never left 
 without men of large minds and large characters 
 who show in their own persons the abolition of 
 these estrangements. And, indeed, the most im- 
 portant of all reconciliations between divergent 
 forms of thought is that which is found in great 
 personalities, in minds, in lives, strong enough to 
 draw together and focus into one view, sources 
 of knowledge which, to most of us, seem so far 
 scattered that we can only look at one or other 
 source at a time. These men prove by an un- 
 faltering confidence that they have somehow in 
 their own lives, although we are not always able 
 to trace the process, made a synthesis, a combination 
 of the different kinds of teaching which God gives 
 us. I will mention only two names, the name of 
 Sir Gabriel Stokes and the name of Cayley, the 
 greatest mathematician of the last century ; and I 
 will only add that a glance at the calendar of the 
 University of Cambridge will be sufficient to show 
 that these names by no means stand alone. 
 
 We went on to say that in this condition of 
 
 D
 
 34 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 estrangement, in order that we may draw more 
 closely to one another, what is needed is on 
 the side of naturalism a spirit, a growing spirit, of 
 reverence, of caution. And the same thing ex- 
 pressed in another set of terms, expressed as a 
 habit of thought, is, we said, the recognition on 
 the part of those who cultivate natural knowledge 
 that their knowledge is arrived at by a method 
 which is of necessity a method of abstraction and 
 limitation. So that it must always be a special 
 result at which they arrive, and in dealing with 
 that result they must remember the conditions by 
 which it was procured. On the other hand, we 
 need in religion the growth of a spirit which I 
 called the scientific spirit, and I was proceeding to 
 an attempt to illustrate or to define more exactly 
 what we may fairly mean by those words. 
 
 And first we said we do not just now mean 
 
 by them that which is, in itself, so valuable — a 
 
 greater respect in the minds of believing 
 
 The scien- ox o 
 
 tific spirit in persons for the labours, the methods, 
 and the results of natural science. This 
 is, indeed, very much to be desired on many 
 grounds ; not only on the general ground that 
 charity requires all men to respect each other's 
 activities in the world of God, but also for par- 
 ticular reasons. 
 
 And it is a fact, a very strange fact, that al- 
 though we are living in a scientific age, anything
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 35 
 
 approaching to a knowledge not of the general 
 principles, but of the methods and the results of 
 any one department of science, is ex- ^ scientific 
 tremely rare among educated men. That ^s:e. 
 is a bold thing to say, but it will bear examina- 
 tion ; and it is something more than an inevitable 
 result of specialization. For this condition of 
 affairs is not paralleled in other cases. There have 
 been other ages which have had other marked 
 characteristics. The seventeenth century was a 
 literary age. In the seventeenth century courtiers 
 carried Plato or Vergil in their pockets to the 
 ante-chamber. The eighteenth century was an age 
 of argument upon a certain level of philosophy, 
 which now we consider to be a low level ; of an 
 atmosphere in philosophy which we now consider 
 to be cold. Well, in that age, the age of the 
 Deists, and of those who resisted the contentions 
 of Deism, all kinds of men in all kinds of places 
 were deeply, practically interested in the arguments 
 which went forward. This age is supposed to be 
 a scientific age, and what we may remark as strange 
 is that in an age which perpetually invokes the 
 name of science, there is an astonishingly narrow 
 extension of anything which can properly be called 
 scientific knowledge in the classes which are sup- 
 posed to be educated. I do not say this of the classes 
 whose education has only begun. In the advanced 
 pupils of the primary schools, in those who attend
 
 36 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 the many institutions for evening instruction, I 
 have no doubt there is a keen interest in natural 
 science and a very considerable knowledge. Such 
 knowledge is extremely rare in those regions of 
 life which we more specially call educated. I think 
 that there are a great many who know no more of 
 science than what is enough to excuse them from 
 coming to church. Therefore it is indeed most 
 desirable that there should be an extended recogni- 
 tion among all kinds of people and all kinds of 
 Christians of the great and wonderful work of 
 science; and about this I shall have something to 
 say, if possible, later on. 
 
 Secondly, we dismiss, as not being that which 
 satisfies for our present purpose the definition of a 
 scientific spirit in religion, another effort which also 
 has its merits ; the effort to arrive at a detailed 
 conciliation with the teaching of natural science, 
 which may cover all the different parts of the 
 statements of religion. It is far from being the 
 case that such an effort is valueless. But it is not 
 that which I was intending at this time by the ex- 
 pression " a scientific spirit." I venture to say that 
 the truly scientific spirit in religion may be press- 
 ing forward and gaining great victories, although 
 that work of detailed conciliation between the Bible, 
 to take one example, and the teachings of zoology, 
 between our traditions of the past of mankind 
 and those scattered discoveries which are made by
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 37 
 
 anthropologists, meets for a time with great diffi- 
 culties, and is often seriously set back. We 
 showed by one example in natural science that a 
 want of continuity between two kinds of know- 
 ledge does not by itself constitute any reason 
 against cultivating both of them with the con- 
 fidence which is proportioned not to the degree 
 of harmony which is made evident between them, 
 but to the relative trustworthiness, the solidity of 
 the premisses of each. 
 
 I will add one example of the same kind, 
 which perhaps may strike you as more interesting. 
 The work of biology, the study of natural forms, 
 which is nowadays, of course, a study of develope- 
 ment, is deeply at war, you might say, with the 
 conclusions of astronomical discovery. It is very 
 difficult for the astronomer and the geologist to 
 allow to biologists nearly enough time for the 
 processes which we conceive to have taken place 
 in the evolution of animal forms ; and we recognize 
 the great difficulty of this want of harmony. But 
 there is still within biological study a sufficiency 
 of real and solid ground ; so that, although we 
 must all admit that there is a mistake somewhere, 
 that mistake is much more likely to be rectified 
 by our pressing on, each on his own side of the 
 gap, with the special work which lies to his hand, 
 than by any present attempt to reach a complete 
 harmony. And, at any rate, that work must not
 
 38 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 be delayed until such a complete harmony has 
 been established between the present provisional 
 conclusions of biology and the present conclusions 
 reached by a larger study of the world's history. 
 These stand for very fair examples, I think, of 
 the truth that discontinuity of knowledge is in 
 itself by no means a sign that either part of the 
 knowledge is untrue. It is, perhaps — and I think 
 most certainly — an inevitable condition of the 
 coexistence of two strains of knowledge, both in 
 an imperfect state, within the bounds of one 
 consciousness. 
 
 Now our fresh point for to-day. In the 
 third place, I do not myself intend by a scientific 
 The subject Spirit in religion that which nowadays 
 psychicaF would with much more confidence claim 
 research. ^^^q name than the two we have already 
 considered. I refer, of course, to those new and 
 strange and, as they are commonly called, occult 
 inquiries by which an endeavour is made to give 
 a scientific basis to religious beliefs ; to find a proof 
 according to the measures which are used in 
 physical science for the existence of man after 
 bodily death. I have not myself nearly sufficiently 
 digested Mr. Myers's posthumous book to be 
 able to express any opinion about the measure 
 of success which his array of proofs has attained 
 to. But whatever be the case about that, I would 
 say that this kind of inquiry, valuable as it may
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 39 
 
 be, valuable as every inquiry into what appears 
 to be true is valuable, is not essential at all to a 
 scientific position for religion, and is not what 
 we mean particularly by those words. To make 
 religion scientific it is not necessary to be able 
 to claim that it is a department of physical or of 
 physiological or of psychological inquiry, that it 
 is a department of science in the ordinary sense 
 of the word. On the contrary, that which could 
 be proved up to the hilt by tests, by forms of 
 experiment which would command the assent 
 of every sensible man, would not have the value 
 which belongs peculiarly to religion. It would 
 lack the claim ot faith and the requirement of 
 adventure by which religion does its work in the 
 soul. And further, all the conclusions which can 
 be reached or seem to be reached from time to 
 time by such special and still strange studies will 
 certainly share the fluctuations which belong to 
 the conclusions of natural science Itself. 
 
 They may appear certain to-day ; they will 
 appear uncertain to-morrow. They will perhaps 
 appear certainly untrue ten years hence. 
 
 J^ ^ ' « '' Fluctuations 
 
 i may be so fortunate as to have a in scientific 
 
 .p . , ,. , , opinion. 
 
 scientmc man in the audience ; and i 
 will venture to say one word which will be a 
 signal to him of the direction in which my 
 thought is at present moving — the word phago- 
 cyte. Twelve years ago it was thought that
 
 40 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 science had laid hold of a new and valuable con- 
 ception of the manner in which disease is destroyed 
 or prevented in the body, and the older theory, 
 which was called the chemical theory, was almost 
 out of court. But now — to speak of a large 
 affair most briefly — after studies which are amazing 
 in their delicacy and in their sureness, and which 
 are illustrated also by singular incidents of personal 
 generosity — for it was the leader of the opposite 
 school who himself gave at the critical moment 
 the advice which rendered the triumph of the 
 present theory certain for the present — what has 
 happened is that we have departed from what was 
 supposed to be the new discovery of 1890 and 
 returned with a greatly increased assurance to 
 something like the conception which ruled before 
 that, and which was based upon the teaching of 
 Pasteur/ The matter referred to is still the 
 subject of great difference of opinion ; but the case 
 serves to show the fluctuations which take place 
 in regard to what seem to be scientific certainties. 
 And I say that if you attempt to base your religion 
 on something which arises from the study of 
 the supposed visitations of persons from beyond 
 the grave, or the supposed influence of disembodied 
 spirits upon hypnotic subjects, you will be always 
 open to the terrible risk that some new and 
 unconsidered thought will arise, that some fresh 
 
 * St. Bart/tolomenvs Hospital Journal. December, 1902.
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 41 
 
 discovery will be gained, that some unsuspected 
 power in human nature will be disclosed which 
 will serve as an explanation for that which you 
 took for the support of your religion on the ground 
 that it could not be physically explained. Your 
 religion will rest upon the gaps in the complete- 
 ness of our physical knowledge, and whenever one 
 of those gaps is bridged, one of the pillars of your 
 chapel of devotion will be undermined. Religion 
 must take account of facts acquired by these new 
 studies as of all other facts. But it must not make 
 of them its peculiar foundation and warrant. 
 
 None of those three things, therefore, either — 
 
 ( 1 ) The general respect which we ought to have 
 
 for other men's knowledge ; or 
 
 The adven- 
 
 (2) The effort to find a detailed con- tureof 
 
 . , . , • 1 1 , science : 
 
 ciliation between the statements 
 of religion and the statements of science, 
 like that, for instance, which Mr. Wal- 
 lace has lately put before us ; or 
 
 (3) The attempt to make a department of 
 
 scientific facts which shall be by them- 
 selves the foundation of religious faith ; — 
 will satisfy the definition of a scientific spirit in 
 religion. What we need is not to make of our 
 religion a department of natural history, but to 
 follow in it that which is good in the spirit of 
 science ; to have what science has at its best, a 
 wide outlook upon all the facts ; to have what
 
 42 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 science has, a generous willingness to adven- 
 ture into regions yet unknown ; to have what 
 science has, a contented spirit under the scorn 
 which comes both upon science and upon religion 
 from the region of merely critical thought ; to 
 cultivate, that is to say, what is fine in science — 
 the positive temper. 
 
 And here I would interject the remark, that it 
 would be far better for us to divide our mental 
 activities into the positive and the critical temper 
 than to divide them, as we do now, into reason 
 and faith. There is not in the Bible ever any 
 contrast between reason and faith. In the Bible 
 faith is contrasted never with reason, but always 
 with sight ; that is to say, with sense-apprehensions. 
 In point of fact, faith is a kind of knowledge, and 
 not only so, but it is the model and type of all 
 sure knowledge. What it is contrasted with is 
 not knowledge, but the critical temper ; and the 
 critical temper is also in a sense a branch of 
 knowledge, a part of the effort of the same 
 reason, but it is a balancing effort. The reason 
 of man CToes forward in some such manner as 
 this. First it reaches after positive gains. It 
 seizes hold of what seem to be certain intuitions. 
 It grasps these as direct additions to its store. 
 And then there comes an answering temper — a 
 temper of criticism, a temper of doubt ; and it 
 is by the interaction of the positive, grasping,
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 43 
 
 adventurous, covetous spirit, of the acquiring 
 reason, with the critical, doubting, examining spirit, 
 the judging reason, that sure advances are made in 
 human knowledge. Now, science is on the side 
 of the positive adventure, and religion also is on 
 the side of the positive adventure. Religion also 
 must have its criticism, but its sympathy is mainly 
 with the positive adventure of science. 
 
 Let me say a word or two more about this 
 adventurous spirit in science, which is exactly 
 what we need in religion. You may j _!„ 
 think that I refer most especially to the Speculation, 
 speculations of science ; and indeed the word 
 which I have used applies most directly to that 
 particular part of its work. It is indeed very 
 amazing, the speculative activity of science. 
 Many of the greatest changes in our conception 
 of the world hav« taken place, not after the 
 accumulation of vast masses of fact ; they have 
 not arisen by adding up a long account to arrive 
 at a certain total ; but they have sprung up almost 
 fully made in minds specially enlightened, specially 
 in tune with the realities of the physical world. 
 There has been something almost of inspiration. 
 There has been, at any rate, a kind of intuition. 
 So, for example, long before men could conceive 
 any method by which evolution might have taken 
 place, long before there was anything which could 
 be called, however roughly, a proof of it — we have
 
 44 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 still no proof in the exact sense, but long before 
 there was anything of the kind, — the dream haunted 
 the imagination of science. It was there from the 
 long past — from the days at least of Greece and 
 Aristotle, and probably as long as men have 
 been upon the earth. Then came the time when 
 in Darwin and Wallace, side by side and inde- 
 pendently, a brilliant conception sprang up, the 
 conception of Natural Selection.^ These men, 
 although they were giants of research, although 
 they accumulated great masses of minute fact, 
 nevertheless had not arrived at anything approach- 
 ing to a conclusion. A brilliant thought was 
 awakened in their minds simultaneously, and then, 
 being produced, being launched as a speculation 
 almost in the air, was verified — how ? It is not 
 indeed verified, but it advances in the direction 
 of verification by the circumstance that it has been 
 found capable of co-ordinating, of giving a mean- 
 ing to, vast multitudes of facts, some of which 
 were known before, and some of which have been 
 drawn out of their hiding-places by the exertions 
 of persons like F. Miiller, who spent their lives in 
 finding what he called Facts for Darwin.^. It is 
 
 ' Spencer preceded Darwin and Wallace in reviving the doctrine 
 of E-volution. But the Conception of Natural Selection or Survival 
 of the Fittest in the struggle for existence belongs to Darwin and 
 Wallace. Indeed, it is possible to doubt whether Spencer ever fully 
 appreciated its value. 
 
 2 F. Midler, Fiir Dariv'iii.
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 45 
 
 a perfectly legitimate process. A man starts with 
 hardly more than a vision of a conceivable 
 method ; and then, as he uses this method in 
 his study of the world, fact after fact strikes 
 him which before was unperceived, undoubtedly 
 to the exclusion of a great number of other 
 facts which do not illustrate his idea. Subse- 
 quently the great crowd of facts falling into 
 place gradually fixes upon men's minds a more 
 or less fully persuaded conviction of the truth, 
 in main outline, of the speculation which was 
 started. 
 
 Now, at present, within the schools of natural 
 science, there is a feeling that speculation has run 
 riot, that we have been too long engaged Theory and 
 in spinning out to ever finer details of verification, 
 conclusion the thread, so to speak, of the new 
 ideas of the last century. There is much com- 
 plaint that we continue branching and rebranching 
 our hypotheses and drawing from them more 
 remote conclusions, until at last in some expres- 
 sions of this temper what we have is little more 
 than dream or poetry. And the cry is that we 
 should return more rapidly to verification, that we 
 should bring our hypotheses more quickly to 
 account. Some go so far as to say that we have 
 so starved for positive study and have been so full 
 of imagination and speculation that the Prelate 
 Mendel alone is fit to be named after Darwin as
 
 46 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 one who has really added anything crucial to our 
 knowledge of biology. 
 
 But, although within science itself there is a 
 feeling that speculation has run riot and must be 
 brought more exactly to book, must be more 
 continually, or at least more frequently matched 
 against the world which it professes to interpret, 
 speculation is in itself a perfectly justifiable exercise 
 of the reason, assisted by the imagination ; and 
 by its means men often acquire solid truth, solid 
 reaHties of discovery. There is something like 
 this also in religion. We reach out after that 
 which is not at present known to us even by 
 revelation — there is an eager straining of the soul. 
 Men have no right to give the name of truth to 
 their own unverified thoughts and feelings. But 
 if, in aiming towards that which is at present 
 unknown, they come to tune their own hearts so 
 that a larger measure of truth pours into them 
 from the experience of life, then even speculation 
 has so far its justification. The place and limits, 
 the character and the necessary safeguards of 
 religious speculation cannot here be described, nor 
 the method suggested by which speculation may 
 pass through verification into knowledge. But, 
 at any rate, we may acknowledge that whatever 
 else a scientific mind might find fault with in 
 religion, it has no right at all, no shadow of right, 
 to find fault with religion because it is adventurous.
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 47 
 
 because it strikes out Into the dark, because it 
 steps out into places where it has no footing 
 assured beforehand. 
 
 But, in the second place, the same adventurous, 
 experimental character belongs to all the special 
 discoveries of science. It sometimes n.— Adven- 
 happens that men come actually to see *"^^^ 
 with their bodily eyes what they had discovery, 
 before divined with the scientific imagination. 
 And so, not as in the verification of large theories, 
 which is always a vague and uncertain verification, 
 but in the actual verification of physical sight, when 
 the eye of the man through the microscope rests 
 upon the very structure which the man had con- 
 ceived — in that also there is something like faith. 
 There also the eye was, so to speak, plunged into 
 a darkness which had not been before explored. 
 
 There is a particular instrument which to my 
 ignorance always stands as a kind of image both 
 of this adventure of physical discovery and of some 
 of the experiences of faith, an instrument (the 
 ophthalmoscope) by which the retina of the eye is 
 examined. If you look where you instinctively 
 suppose the object to be, you see nothing but a 
 blurred light. You have by an effort of the will, 
 until you become practised, to focus the eye, as 
 if in blind obedience to authority, upon a point 
 behind and beyond the head of the person whose 
 eye you wish to examine. You must resist the
 
 48 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 natural inclination to look where by instinct your 
 mind places the object, and by an effort in obedi- 
 ence to a type of authority, that is, to knowledge 
 antecedently secure, you must focus your gaze 
 beyond. But when this focusing is done, then 
 the senses are confronted by the sight of a real 
 object ; and you actually observe that which, so to 
 speak, you previously divined, that which you 
 sought after in obedience/ Even so in religion 
 we are obliged to seek after that which we have 
 only heard of, and to put ourselves into a posture 
 for receiving it which has not yet been justified 
 by any experience — to throw ourselves into an 
 attitude of mind which is prescribed for us by an 
 authority coming down from God. But when 
 that is done, there comes a personal security and 
 an absolute fitting together of the consciousness 
 
 1 The teaching which indicates beforehand the direction in which 
 a result is to be looked for (and found or missed) must not be con- 
 founded with the artificial simulation of results in oidcr to encourage 
 inquiry. Both in natural and in spiritual science the real experi- 
 mental method, the lawful marriage of authority or instruction with 
 personal effort and personal verification, is discredited by the exist- 
 ence of a parody. Lecturers, giving Foucault's pendulum demon- 
 stration of the earth's rotation, or the classical experiments to show 
 virtual velocities, are said to have made their instruments move as 
 they ought to move according to theory — to encourage students. 
 So I learn from one ot Mr. Wells's characters, a detected spiritualist- 
 cheat, who defends by this example his own provision of sham 
 ' supernatural phenomena,' which may induce (as Browning's 
 Sludge pleads) real manifestations. This interference with results 
 for 'edification ' is not parallel but contrary to the real experimental 
 method.
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 49 
 
 which is capable of receiving Divine instruction 
 with the Divine instruction which is ready to be 
 poured into it. There, again, in the actual adven- 
 turousness which belongs to common observation 
 — which belongs much more strikingly, of course, 
 to special and new discoveries, but which results, 
 not in a theoretical degree of certainty, but in 
 absolute physical proof — you have something like 
 the adventurous spirit which is so often complained 
 of in faith. Very often one is obliged to say 
 to those who wish for certainty that they must act 
 in order that they may know ; that they must do 
 the Will of God in order that they may grow in 
 conviction ; that they can never know first and 
 then act, but that their certainty will come in the 
 course of prolonged obedience. They say, " You 
 are inviting me to take a leap in the dark," The 
 same plea would hold good for an inquirer in 
 natural knowledge. The same plea would most cer- 
 tainly hold good on the lips of a student who should 
 approach the schools of anatomy or physiology. 
 It is not untrue to say that before he can know any- 
 thing he is invited first to make a leap in the dark. 
 And so, in the third place, I would speak of 
 that discipline of teaching by which, in jjj ^^ 
 point of fact, men are trained to become venture m 
 
 J. the ordinary 
 
 the discoverers whom we reverence. discipline of 
 
 A . science. 
 
 A man comes to begin the study 
 of nature, to have his first introduction into 
 
 E
 
 50 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 some branch of physical science. Does he know 
 beforehand what he is going to learn ? Has 
 he beforehand any ground for security that the 
 methods which are to be used are just, except 
 the security of authority ? Let us suppose an 
 undergraduate at Oxford halting on the steps of 
 our museum and refusing to enter and put himself 
 under any discipline until he is sure that there is 
 such a study as physiology, that its conclusions are 
 relatively certain, that it is based upon the con- 
 templation of real laws of nature. Might he not 
 say something like this ? — " There has been much 
 difference of opinion on these subjects. Many 
 things formerly believed are believed no longer. 
 I am inclined myself to think that it is all un- 
 susceptible of real proof. I am an agnostic with 
 regard to physiology." Were he to halt outside 
 until he had made sure, could he ever enter ? Is 
 he not obliged to enter with the spirit of faith, 
 with tremendous presuppositions ; first presuppos- 
 ing that there is real fact to be discovered, and 
 secondly that those who teach have hold of a 
 method which, though imperfect, is in a measure 
 sure and continually rewarded with fresh results .? 
 Must he not go in with those presuppositions and 
 put himself in the hands of men who at first will 
 show him none of the things that he desires to 
 know ^ He is, let us say, a medical student. 
 He sees nothincj at first which seems to have a
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 51 
 
 direct, scarcely even a remote, bearing on medicine. 
 It is by simple, almost mechanical work, by all 
 sorts of ordinary training, that the man has to be 
 brought into some degree of discipline before 
 curiosity receives any satisfaction. There is a 
 o-reat exercise of faith to be made. But the 
 student does not perceive discomfort in this exer- 
 cise of faith, because all round him are people 
 who thoroughly believe in the reality of physical 
 science. And, besides, there is a part of his own 
 being which belongs to the subject-matter of 
 the science. He carries about his own body as 
 an ever-present example and evidence of the 
 reality of the subject. Now, if we also walked 
 as we ought to walk, in the full exercise of our 
 other powers, if our spirits which have been made 
 alive in Christ continued alive In prayer, if we 
 exercised and energised and worked with those 
 faculties which God has planted within us for 
 everlasting life, if we were sweating In the busi- 
 ness of virtue, then we should be conscious — 
 as every man is conscious of his body so we 
 should be conscious also — of our spiritual 
 being. We should not be cast back when we 
 draw near to religion by the demand for a self- 
 committal which Is not at first, or at any rate 
 not beforehand, justified, but which goes for- 
 ward to a ground where it shall be rewarded with 
 certainty.
 
 52 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 Notice this in the discipline of natural science. 
 It begins and it continually proceeds by the exer- 
 cise of authority and the willingness of 
 
 Authority c r i • i • 
 
 and personal obedience, otep alter Step this authority 
 justifies itself. This obedience is re- 
 warded by a personal apprehension of that which 
 was spoken of. I myself was instructed — or I 
 ought rather to say entered to the science which 
 I have not pursued — by a great teacher of mor- 
 phology, Professor Moseley, who had perhaps 
 this as his leading characteristic — that whatever he 
 spoke of, whatever he taught, he would not on 
 any account allow one man in his whole class to 
 suppose himself to be certain of any point, however 
 minute, however large, however rarely seen, or 
 however commonly known, which he had not seen 
 and verified with his own eyes. We were forced, 
 sometimes against our will, sometimes grumbling 
 as at an unnecessary discipline, to make sure of 
 facts which we were perfectly ready to take on 
 trust — some of them well-known facts, not very 
 easy to bring to book and to demonstrate, like 
 the presence of cellulose in the outer coat of 
 Salpidae. These are worrying, troublesome things 
 which some students are quite willing to take 
 out of the books. It was Professor Moseley's 
 characteristic to insist upon personal investigation. 
 We learned, indeed, under his authority. He 
 told us things that we had never heard before ;
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 53 
 
 we had to yield our minds to his guidance, and 
 so it is always in positive instruction. But the 
 mind once yielded is set upon the track by which 
 It can itself receive by its own senses its own 
 certain and immediate assurance. 
 
 So it is to be in the conflict and in the labour 
 of faith. We put ourselves in the school of Christ 
 Who knoweth the Father. We lay ourselves 
 alongside not only of the vast multitude who 
 now find freedom and joy and strength under 
 His discipline, but of the unnumbered multitudes 
 of the generations before. We put ourselves in 
 the great Church under His hand. But our 
 confidence, although it marches in battalions and 
 armies, is to be individual in its reward ; and the 
 man who, putting himself under the guidance 
 and discipline of Christ, looking up for His Holy 
 Spirit, reading and studying in the Bible the 
 ancient records of the body to which he belongs, 
 will find something which is not ancient and 
 remote, not literary, not historical only, not 
 merely corporate ; for in his obedience he will 
 march to an individual satisfaction. Placing him- 
 self antecedently under the command of One 
 Who knows. Whom he believes to know although 
 he cannot prove that He knows, he shall become 
 convinced of the knowledge of his Teacher by 
 the fact that it is communicated to himself. 
 
 This is the spirit, as 1 conceive, of science in
 
 54 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 religion ; a spirit which is content in long patience 
 
 to gather together the scattered proofs ; a spirit 
 
 eager in adventures which are, step by 
 
 The parallel , • , • r- i i ^ • • r 
 
 state in Step, justified by the certainties or yester- 
 reigion. j^^ j^^ making ever fresh plunges into 
 
 regions beyond our present vision ; a spirit whose 
 servants put themselves under the guidance of 
 those who seem to know, and, guided by them, 
 guided by Him — for there is but One Who knows 
 of Himself — themselves receive freedom in the 
 eternal world, and find their own certainties in 
 their own experience. They have a security 
 which, though it be individual in its nearness and 
 intimacy, is in its substance and in its interests 
 bound up with the great truth which governs 
 the whole body into which they have been 
 brought. 
 
 And, finally, even as science justifies itself 
 by the accumulation of fresh truth through the 
 The place attractive force of a new thought, even 
 longs to^" '^^ science justifies itself by perpetual 
 action. arrivals in its repeated adventures — 
 
 arrivals which become in turn the basis for new 
 enterprises of risk — so most expressly science 
 justifies itself by its power of action^ by its 
 power of influencing the world, the very world 
 towards which it is aimed as an interpreta- 
 tion. That is the supreme verification. If a 
 man deep in an early study of idealist philosophy
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 55 
 
 should find himself in the not uncommon 
 state of" doubting the reality of the external 
 world, I would point him, not, as Johnson did, 
 to a stone and the kick it gets, but to an achieve- 
 ment of engineering like the great bridge across 
 the Forth. There you see the reason of man in 
 practical alliance with the laws of matter. When 
 you read Professor Ward's great book. Agnosti- 
 cism and Naturalism^ you may rise from that study, 
 especially if, with me, you are no mathematician, 
 under the impression that the whole theoretical 
 basis of the science of physics has been swept 
 away. But presently you say to yourself, 
 " Although the science of physics knows nothing 
 of absolute time, although it makes many hasty 
 identifications between its own rough discoveries 
 and the ultimate and absolute truths of mathe- 
 mathics, nevertheless it is sufficiently true to be 
 able to throw iron together in vast masses, to 
 cast out its venturous immense pair of cantilevers 
 across a flood of water to arrive at the other side. 
 The physicists have their laws ; they have their 
 formulae ; they have their equations, which, 
 though they be far from the mathematical truth, 
 are closely enough in tune with the world of 
 actuality to span the gulfs and to carry human 
 life from shore to shore." It is the power of 
 action in science which shows that, however justly 
 criticism may discount its claim to absolute
 
 56 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 certainty, there is a practical certainty within it, 
 and also a real though undefined relation to the 
 fundamental truth itself. 
 
 And so it is with religion. There is no end 
 to the thoughts by which we may challenge 
 the reality of its premisses. But all these are 
 answered by the man who looks out not only 
 into the world of history, though that is rich 
 in proofs, but into the great world of moral 
 and spiritual experience, and finds that those 
 presuppositions which he has trusted bring him 
 daily into a closer and richer intercourse with 
 larger multitudes of souls, rob him of no 
 entrance into other kinds of knowledge, never 
 obscure tor him the teachings of history and of 
 science ; and give him what is much more impor- 
 tant still as a proof, the power and the impulse and 
 the practical knowledge himself to act upon that 
 scene from which, by our virtue and by our 
 obedience, we are to extract the affirmation of 
 faith. 
 
 For, indeed, faith is not a crop which springs 
 out of the world to reward a careless harvester ; 
 it is rather the work of a soul which, out of a 
 world which would otherwise seem dead, extracts 
 the answer of confidence in God. Did I speak of 
 the world as if it were empty of meaning ? It is 
 alive with meaning, filled with a voice of God. 
 But it is the voice rather of God's question to us
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 57 
 
 than of His answer. It challenges, it provokes 
 the response of faith, and the dark places, the 
 breaks — 
 
 " What if the breaks themselves should prove at last 
 The most consummate of contrivances 
 To train a man's eye, teach him w^hat is faith ? 
 And so we stumble at truth's very test." ^ 
 
 ' Robert Browning, Bishop Blougrams Apology.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROBLEMS 
 
 From a general discussion of the nature ot faith and of knowledge 
 — We turn to particular difficulties — The effect of these diffi- 
 culties is cumulative and not unconfused — Often the contrasted 
 statements of science and religion are in no real collision — 
 Four classes of 'modern difficulties' distinguished — Materialism 
 excluded from the present discussion — Evolution and theism 
 — The conflict may be better stated as between theism and 
 natural selection — The so-called deistic tone of the older tele- 
 ology — Paley — A more apostolic divinity — Faith has gained 
 by attention to modern science — Not the world observed but 
 the observing mind was amiss — Pasteur. 
 
 "And the angel said unto me, If I had asked thee, saying. How many 
 dwellings are there in the heart of the sea ? or how many springs are there 
 at the fountain head of the deep ? or how many ways are above the firma- 
 ment ? or which are the outgoings of hell ? or which are the paths of 
 paradise ? peradventure thou wouldest say unto me, I never went down into 
 the deep, nor as yet into hell, neither did I ever climb up into heaven. 
 Nevertheless now have I asked thee b\it only of the fire and wind, and of 
 the day, things wherethrough thou hast passed, and without which thou 
 canst not be, and yet hast thou given me no answer of them, 
 
 "He said, moreover, unto me, Thine own things, that are grown up with 
 thee, canst thou not know ; how then can thy vessel comprchen<l the way 
 of the Most High ? and how can he that is already worn out with the 
 corrupted world understand the way of the incorruptible ? " — 2 Esdras iv. 
 7-11. 
 
 The day just passed through, the things 
 " without which we cannot be " (Revised Version),
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROBLEMS 59 
 
 the " things from which we cannot be separated " 
 (Authorized Version), the common conditions 
 and accompaniments of life, are beyond From a 
 understanding. Nay, "thine own things, fus"s!on of ^' 
 that are grown up with thee, canst thou SfthlnTof 
 not know ; how then can thy vessel com- knowledge, 
 prehend the way of the Most High ? " This ancient 
 utterance, not belonging to the fully canonical 
 Scriptures, may well stand in our own minds to 
 express the sense of mystery in which we ought 
 to move, we who not only cannot tell much about 
 the outskirts of the world, the origin of the sphere 
 in which we live, but do not so much as penetrate 
 the mystery of the air we breathe. Till quite 
 lately there was not a man in England or in Europe 
 who knew why a boy's spinning-top stands up. 
 Lord Kelvin knows now, but there are not many 
 men who have been able to master his explanation. 
 Living in a world of which the common motions 
 are so mysterious, we must be cautious in drawing 
 conclusions about great things far afield. 
 
 Now, to-day, we are to leave — and I leave it 
 with reg-ret — the consideration of the nature of 
 faith and the nature of science, in order 
 to come to some or those special aim- particular 
 
 ,..,., , difficulties. 
 
 culties in which men are more apt to be 
 interested. But I cannot leave the earlier con- 
 sideration without two remarks to make myself 
 safe ; and first, the remark that our treatment of
 
 6o THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 the nature of faith is very incomplete. Faith 
 resembles science in many other respects besides 
 those that I have named, and it differs from science 
 also in many very important respects. And the 
 second remark is this — that what you really need, 
 my brothers who are puzzled and distracted by 
 what are called scientific difficulties, is precisely to 
 attain to larger thoughts. The mischief that 
 special theories do is that they fix your eyes 
 upon a narrow line and rob you of the spectacle 
 of the world. What you need is not to press on 
 along a single line of argument, but to give your- 
 self a month's rest and let the world — the ordinary 
 experience of the world, not to mention the ex- 
 perience of grace which we might have, but the 
 ordinary impression of the spectacle of the world — 
 have its effect upon you. There is a young man 
 who is almost like Romeo in his mother's descrip- 
 tion : — 
 
 " Away from light steals home my heavy son, 
 And private in his chamber pens himself, 
 Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out 
 And makes himself an artificial night : 
 Black and portentous must this humour prove. 
 Unless good counsel may the cause remove." ^ 
 
 ^ Romeo and Juliet, act i. sc. i. It must be owned that print 
 gives the speech to Montague, not Lady Montague. But my 
 mistake was so natural, that it might almost suggest an emendation 
 to the learned. The speech is a mother's speech. I would let Lord 
 Montague begin at "Black and portentous."
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROBLEMS 6i 
 
 The humour is portentous, not always because 
 it leads him to important destructive conclusions 
 with regard to the Christian faith, but because at 
 the critical moment of his life, when he ought to 
 be entering into his heritage of the world and of 
 religion he is tied up by a network of narrow 
 considerations. And this servitude, though it 
 will not bear the wear and tear of life, though 
 it may probably not outlast the anxieties of the first 
 years of marriage, will nevertheless serve to tide 
 him fatally over the critical moments of life when 
 his soul is yet flexible and impressible ; and 
 when he emerges from his dream he will emerge 
 from it a tired man, with very little power and 
 force in him for the adventure to which God calls 
 him. 
 
 I venture to remind you who are Christians 
 of this, you whose certain faith is not by any 
 means dependent upon the way in which our 
 little argument may turn, and who may think 
 that these matters of scientific debate are un- 
 important to believers. Remember that they may, 
 in the light of a wider study, appear unimportant 
 for apologetics, for the future of the Christian 
 faith in literature or in argument. But they are 
 not unimportant in the lives of men. You say, 
 " God is sure to win." Yes, God is sure to win. 
 The question is, Will He win in me, or will His 
 victory advance and leave me behind ?
 
 62 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 Well, with that let us approach these great 
 questions, these important difficulties which arise 
 The effect of from modern science. I find myself 
 cuiues is " here in another kind of difficulty from 
 and'not un- that which I must attempt to describe, 
 confused. j^y^Q scientific or naturalistic attack upon 
 religion, if we may speak of such a thing — always 
 being careful to remember that it is not science 
 which is interested in the attack on religion but a 
 particular school of naturalistic thought — this 
 attack is itself immensely confused. It is thrown 
 upon us like a body of fighters, horse, foot, and 
 artillery mixed together ; and it is very difficult to 
 disentangle out of the great mass of objections 
 different points which will meet the different parts 
 of our faith. Unbelief has what Christians have 
 always claimed for their own position. It has a 
 cumulative weight. It has a general and, we must 
 confess, also a confused effect, but an effect that is 
 very practical. Now, if we Christians have been 
 accustomed to say that we have a right to those 
 conclusions which arise from a general and cumu- 
 lative study of facts, as well as to those which we 
 can prove logically along separate lines, we must 
 o-rant the same freedom to unbelief. And when 
 my friend who is a materialist or who is an un- 
 christian evolutionist can give no clear account 
 of his difficulty, and yet says that on the whole his 
 religion is gone, I have no right to quarrel with
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROBLEMS 63 
 
 that attitude. But we have a right to seek to 
 disentangle the different elements of that which 
 disturbs him. Very often they are so entangled 
 that they have but little effect upon Christians. 
 
 They seem to us not only inconclusive, but 
 to be on a different plane from that of the things 
 with which we are concerned, and there- 
 fore not to come into collision with them contested 
 at all. I read in a popular book which ofsdTncf 
 describes the mystery of the Holy Trinity tl^e^fir" 
 by a new name, Triplotheism, and there- s?on."'^" 
 fore gives it somehow a lessened respect, 
 that the myth of God has been exploded by 
 scientific geology ! You may well ask how geology 
 comes into the same house with the idea of God 
 our Father 1 I cannot, for my own part, conceive 
 not only how a person is convinced by this thought, 
 but how he even gets to blows with such a con- 
 tention. I cannot so steer my faith as to bring it 
 into collision with any account which men may 
 disentangle of the mode in which the earth's crust 
 has its present form. There is a want of coinci- 
 dence in the level of the two forces, so that it is 
 very difficult to bring them into mental opposi- 
 tion. But to a more refined ingenuity it seems 
 to be possible. To me the statement I have 
 quoted sounds very much like a play on words. 
 It reminds me of the case of the poor man who 
 represents to the rich man's servant that he has
 
 64 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 come by appointment ; and the shrewd porter says, 
 " This man is an impostor ; I myself saw him 
 come by the omnibus." ^ 
 
 Very many of the contentions with which we 
 are confronted are little more respectable than 
 that. We say the world was made by God. You 
 say the world was made by evolution. Is there 
 any discrepancy in those two statements ? Do 
 you distinguish two rooms, and say, " This room 
 was swept with a purpose, and that room was 
 swept with a broom " ? I have to admit that my 
 mind is so framed that I find it immensely difficult 
 to manage my faith, not so that it may overcome 
 such objections, but so that it may find them 
 formidable. The unmusical man at a concert 
 says, "What are you crying about, with your 
 Wagner or your Brahms ,? It is only horse-hair 
 scraping upon catgut." So it is, but the one 
 account does not exclude the other ; /*//« nempeche 
 pas f autre. This scraping is also the outpouring 
 of souls by a method of communication finer and 
 rarer than speech, so that a power which lies hidden 
 in the artist and which he could never otherwise 
 
 > It may be gravely objected that this and like sayings are mere 
 tricks of speech, founded on an admitted ambiguity of prepositions, 
 and intended to win a smile. I quite agree. It is only a joke : but 
 it is the veiy joke which is offered to us as a philosophy. And I 
 wish that the humorous quality might be recognized in certain 
 solemn arguments which depend upon exactly the same ambiguities : 
 upon the fact, that is, that we use one language to express two kinds 
 of relation, and that language always lags behind knowledge.
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROBLEMS 65 
 
 express, touches chords in the hearer which the 
 hearer could never lay bare. But it is perfectly 
 true at the same time that the whole effect is 
 due to the friction increased by resin of little 
 parcels of horse-hair upon strings of catgut. And 
 the refined ingenuity, as I said, of some of our 
 controversialists is able to bring the two kinds of 
 statement — that which proceeds upon the lines of 
 physical description, and that which proceeds upon 
 the lines of spiritual and moral purpose and reality 
 — into conflict.^ Many of the difficulties of religion 
 are not the difficulties of reaching a conciliation. 
 They are the difficulties of originating debate. 
 
 Now, in the great mass, the confused array, 
 of difficulties, I think that we are wise if we 
 disentanMe these groups. First, there _ 
 
 ^ . . Four classes 
 
 are the objections which are brought to of 'modern 
 
 , -' , • • 1 • r difficulties ' 
 
 bear upon the spiritual conception or distin- 
 the world ; that is to say, there are 
 the contentions of materialism. Secondly, there 
 are contentions^ directed against Christian truth. 
 Thirdly, there are contentions directed against 
 the general belief in God, against theism. And, 
 lastly, there are contentions directed against the 
 dignity and spiritual reality of man's own life. 
 Or, to put them in an ascending order, there is, 
 first, materialism ; then there is the attack on the 
 spiritual nature of man ; thirdly, there is the 
 
 I I think I owe the violin example to tiic liisiu))) of Binniiighain. 
 
 F
 
 66 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 attack on the general belief in God, natural 
 religion, theism ; and, lastly, there are the objec- 
 tions which are of course more serious, and which 
 are more capable of real debate, the objections 
 directed against the Christian dogma, positive 
 religion, Bible religion. 
 
 There is the sense that we are real live persons. 
 That has to be defended. There is the belief that 
 the ultimate reality of the world is alive as we are, 
 and is personal, is God. Thirdly, there are the 
 special and separate and positive beliefs which we 
 draw from the Bible, or which are part of the 
 Christian faith. 
 
 Now, the question of materialism we must 
 
 leave on one side, not because it is unimportant, 
 
 but because it would absorb the whole of 
 
 Materialism . . , . _ 
 
 excluded the rcst ot our time during Lent. And 
 
 from the . , , • t -n i i • 
 
 present dis- With regard to It 1 Will only say this 
 
 cussion. ] 1 • 1 r • i 
 
 word, which tor practical purposes may 
 not be worthless. For a man who is himself 
 driving towards materialism, or who thinks that 
 the weight of learned authority is against his 
 spiritual faith, it is good to remember that the 
 two names which are most freely quoted in this 
 connexion are both of them names of men who 
 would never tolerate being called materialists. I 
 mean, of course, Huxley, and Mr. Spencer, whom 
 many refer to, with an affectionate familiarity to 
 which I am not entitled, as Herbert Spencer.
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROBLEMS 67 
 
 Now, Mr. Huxley in many places has said that 
 he would on no account accept the name of a 
 materialist ; and Mr. Spencer, in his latest book, 
 Facts and Comments^ complains bitterly that men 
 have tried again to fix this name upon him. 
 At the close of a passage which I cannot quote in 
 full, he says. Considering all the positions I have 
 established or tried to establish, considering finally 
 that I have taught that " force as we know it can 
 be regarded only as a conditioned effect of the 
 Unconditioned Cause [the Unknowable], I might " 
 — and these are the words I beg you to notice — 
 " 1 might reasonably have thought that no one 
 would have called me a materialist." ^ This is 
 Mr. Spencer : " I might reasonably have thought 
 that no one would have called me a materialist." 
 And yet a great many of his younger friends seem 
 to be quite sure that he is one. He complains 
 in the same passage that the excuse is put forward 
 that perhaps his critics have not read his books. 
 To this he replies, " 1 am not aware that one who 
 condemns an author's opinions "• — that is by 
 calling him a materialist — " is excused because he 
 does not know what those opinions are." The 
 rebuke, intended for a Broad Church critic of 
 
 1 The reference was to Facts and Comments, published 1902, in the 
 chapter "Exaggerations and Misstatements" (p. 109). Mr. Spencer 
 proceeds : " Still more atter the elaborate analysis contained in sections 
 271,272 [ot ' Principles of Psychology '] showing the imtenability of 
 materialism, I should have supposed the repudiation complete."
 
 68 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 Spencer, is worth thinking of by people on the 
 other side as well. And, by the way, it would not 
 be a bad rule to make for one's self, to call no 
 philosopher by his Christian name without reading 
 at least one of his books. We must leave aside 
 the question of materialism. 
 
 There remains the question of attacks upon 
 positive religion, Bible religion, dogmatic religion, 
 historic religion ; the attack upon theism as such, 
 the belief in God, which is the conclusion of 
 natural religion ; and those considerations which 
 seem to conflict with our belief in the dignity, 
 and the permanence, and the spiritual reality of 
 our own lives. 
 
 What is it which comes into conflict with 
 theism, with the conclusions of natural religion. 
 
 Evolution with the belief in God .'' I put this to 
 and theism, y^^ . j^. j^ j^q^. ^.j^^ doctrine ot evolution 
 
 which comes into conflict with theism. 1 do not 
 think that one could very easily trame a pair ot 
 syllogisms, a form of argument by which you 
 could bring into opposition the conclusion of 
 theism that there is a personal life, a spiritual 
 unity behind the world, and the statement that 
 the world continually changes, grows, unfolds 
 itself as a flower does, and that it came to have 
 its present relatively permanent form by processes 
 comparable to those which we now see going on. 
 That is what evolution teaches us. It is that ihe
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROBLEMS 69 
 
 world came to its present form, its present relatively 
 permanent form — for of course all things are 
 changing — hy the action of forces not dissimilar from 
 those which we now see operative round about us. 
 And, in particular, it has an important doctrine 
 with regard to the origin of living forms, and it 
 teaches with a high degree of certainty that the 
 forms of animal and of vegetable life are related 
 to one another by a law of growth ; that the 
 higher forms have grown out of the lower state 
 of life which is still represented amongst us by 
 permanently lower forms. That is to say, currents 
 in the tide of life have advanced with unequal 
 velocity, so that there are still in its general stream 
 representatives of the state in which life started, 
 or something like that in which it started — 
 namely, the unicellular animals and plants. And 
 at the same time other forms have gone further 
 en echelon till they have reached the high degree 
 of specialization which we see in vertebrates, in 
 mammals, and in man. 
 
 Now, has that conception anything to urge 
 against the doctrine that there was a personal 
 cause behind the whole process : that this cause 
 has in Himself at least all that we have in our- 
 selves } Has it anything to say against the con- 
 tention that the cause must at least be as large as 
 the effect ? And, if the effect is still going on, 
 must not the cause be larger yet and lie beyond
 
 70 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 it ? The Psalmist says, " I see that all things 
 come to an end ; but Thy Commandment is ex- 
 ceeding broad " — that is, extends beyond the end. 
 It lies outside each passing thing, and when 
 each state comes to an end the Commandment 
 is still there. We may say the same about all 
 we see, about the universe. It is continually 
 coming to an end, and yet there is something 
 which is continually the same. We may say of 
 all the parts of that effect which we call the 
 world, that they are continually coming to an 
 end, but that the origin of them all is " exceeding 
 broad " ; it goes beyond them all, made what has 
 been, makes possible what shall be. 
 
 I do not stop here to maintain what I have 
 said, or to show cause for it. I only submit to 
 you provisionally that there is no ground for 
 so much as initiating a debate between the idea 
 of evolution and the idea of God. 
 
 But with regard to Natural Selection, the 
 
 case is somewhat different. Natural Selection is 
 
 the suffPfested mode or machinery by 
 
 The conflict , . , °° , . t . / 
 
 maybe which this chanfjingr current was guided. 
 
 better stated . . ... 
 
 as between With regard to this, there \^ prima facie 
 
 theism and . ^ ^ • • i i • j 
 
 natural an Opportunity or conflict with the idea 
 
 of God. There must be primd facie 
 such a ground, for in point of fact such ground 
 was taken. 
 
 Let us try by the briefest possible reflexion
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROBLEMS 71 
 
 on the past to notice how this came to be. 
 Briefly, it came to pass on account of the fact 
 that in Christian minds a narrow idea of God 
 reigned. 
 
 This idea is generally called the deistic idea, 
 but it is not properly the deist's idea at all. 
 The deist's idea is that God does not affect the 
 world any more ; that He is remote from it. 
 But those Christian apologists who have 
 
 . ^ The so- 
 
 fought against the deists, and of whom called deistic 
 
 J • -rj 1 1 tone of the 
 
 the most renowned is raley, sought to older teie- 
 show, m contradiction to this opinion 
 that God is remote from the world, the traces 
 of God's action in it ; and in so doing their own 
 minds became coloured by the notion in which 
 God is represented as if He were a workman 
 upon, or at best a workman inside. His own 
 world. He is continually called the Artificer of 
 the Universe, the Great Architect, and the sug- 
 gestion which is raised by these words is of a 
 wonderful Power Who, in conditions which He 
 found established beforehand, and with material 
 which He was able to lay hold of, set in process 
 changes which lead towards an end which is not 
 Himself. God is conceived of as One working 
 upon a material world, which He has to manage 
 as best He can. 
 
 And there was this further weakness in the 
 system, that the wonderful character and Divine
 
 72 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 origin of the world were thought to be indicated, 
 not in its general amazing unity, but in the fact 
 that this or that part of it fitted another part of it, 
 as if God had been in the world fitting keys to 
 locks, rather than Himself the source of all the 
 different sides of every reality. And so in point 
 of fact in Paley — whom we ought all to remember 
 with great respect, for he did good work certainly 
 not for religion only, but for science also — there 
 is, nevertheless, a tendency to make the most of 
 those cases of adaptation of which no physical, 
 mechanical account can be given. 
 
 There is a remarkable instance, which I would 
 not venture to recite from memory, in which he 
 discusses the mode in which certain 
 ^^^' insects are folded up within the shell 
 of the egg. He traces the mechanical origin of 
 this and that adaptation. He says this feature 
 and this are due to pressure ; but of this third 
 particular adaptation no account can be given of 
 its origination by pressure, and therefore we 
 must say that it is due to design.^ This makes the 
 
 1 "The art also with wliich tlic young insect is coiled up in the 
 egg presents, where it can be examineil, a subject of great curiosity. 
 The insect, furnished witli all the niemlKTs that it ought to have, is 
 rolled up into a form which seems to contract it into the least 
 possible space; by which contraction, notwithstanding the smallness 
 of the egg, it has room enough in its compartment and to spare. 
 This folding of the limbs appears to me to indicate a special direction ; 
 for if it were merely the effect of compression, tlie collocation of the
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROBLEMS 73 
 
 evidence of the Divine design vary inversely with 
 the evidence of the physical process, as if purpose 
 was something which did not display itself in action. 
 There was, therefore, a tendency to feel that when 
 a new physical explanation had been discovered, 
 a new antecedent for the effect which we are 
 immediately observing, we get rid of, or we 
 decrease pro tanto^ the necessity for believing in 
 God. In fact, God took this place in science ; 
 He was the power to fill up gaps which could 
 not be bridged by a description of definite 
 changes. In science He was the axiom neces- 
 sary to give unity to the scheme of thought. 
 In religion he was the demonstrandum^ the thing 
 to be proved — proved by the need of Him to 
 explain the physical discrepancy. 
 
 Now, that is obviously a very narrow and 
 unchristian view of God. God is not a Power 
 Who has to be supposed in order to 
 
 . ~ . , A more 
 
 complete the conception of a physical apostolic 
 
 divinity. 
 
 process which is imperfectly observed 
 or understood. We have vastly different sources 
 of our confidence in Him. But that line of 
 thought we must not now pursue. We must 
 be content to observe that just so far as 
 Christians were possessed by this narrow and 
 
 parts would be more various than it is " (Paley, Natural Theology, 
 cap. xix.). Some further illustrations of tlic older teleology are placed 
 in an Appendix, p. 275.
 
 74 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 limited view of God, they were open to a shock 
 when a physical cause or set of causes was sug- 
 gested which had not before been considered, 
 and which seemed to explain most of those adap- 
 tations which Paley had triumphantly pointed to 
 as unintelligible. They now became intelligible. 
 There was now framed, under the name of natural 
 selection, a scheme of thought by which it could 
 be shown how, by the excess in multiplication of 
 individuals, and by the struggle for life under 
 the stress of circumstances or the competition of 
 other individuals, various advantages, however 
 minute, might be selected for survival and for 
 accumulation by inheritance. Since those days 
 of the beginnings of the doctrine of natural 
 selection we have gone a very long way in re- 
 examining it, strengthening it, and at the same 
 time showing how far we are from certainty with 
 regard to it. Nevertheless, taking it as it stands 
 as a theory having a high relative degree of pro- 
 bability, at any rate for large classes of facts, you 
 see how it came into conflict with a proof of God 
 which relied upon the absence of any clear per- 
 ception of the manner in which things came to 
 be what they are. If you could show a physical 
 antecedent for a given adaptation, so far you had 
 eot rid of the need of God. 
 
 This is the cause of the supposed conflict 
 between natural selection and the belief in God ;
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROBLEMS 75 
 
 and the cure for it we have of necessity described in 
 speaking of the evil itself. You learned yesterday,^ 
 no doubt, the latest news from medicine — that the 
 cure for the diseases produced by certain bacteria is 
 to be found in the juices expressed from the bacteria 
 themselves crushed, triturated, at the temperature 
 of liquid air. Well, something of the same sort 
 happens with the supposed contests and conflicts 
 between religion and science. The cure for them 
 is found in that which is extracted from the 
 crushing of the very thing — the false antithesis- — 
 which was the source of danger. In the very 
 effort to bring our minds to bear upon these 
 supposed new difficulties we have enlarged, we 
 have corrected, we have brought back again to a 
 patristic model, to something more like what the 
 ancient teachers of the Church held, our concep- 
 tion of God. It is thus, is it not, that we attain 
 once more 
 
 " to perceive that God 
 Knew what He undertook when He made things " ? '-^ 
 
 We see more and more clearly that we must 
 exclude all notions of Him as separate from His 
 
 1 The reference was to Dr. Macfadyen's account of the treatment 
 of typhoid, communicated on Thursday, 12th March, to the Royal 
 Society by Lord Lister, and noticed in the Times of Sat unlay, 14th 
 March, 1903. 
 
 * Robert Browning, fr/z/ff Hohenstiel-Sch^aiigau, Works, vol. xi. 
 p. 113.
 
 76 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 world or merely labouring in it, merely fitting this 
 to that. He is in all and over all and through 
 Faith h s ^^^ » transcending all, and yet infinitely 
 g-ainedby near and present to all. And to Him 
 
 attention to '^ 
 
 modern belonp- all the conditions, as well as those 
 
 science 
 
 things which take place in the condi- 
 tions. He is powerful on both sides of every pres- 
 sure. He is in the adapted and in that to which it 
 is adapted. And as we gaze further on the world, 
 our wonder is, not as Paley's sometimes was, that 
 this or that insect's structure shows a form which 
 we cannot explain, but that the whole great com- 
 plex, the vast and unimaginable interplay of forces 
 coming from beyond the furthest star, results in 
 the varied scene of life and beauty which we see 
 and in which we share. The wonder of all 
 wonders is that we can understand it, that we can 
 look upon it as if from without as well as from 
 within ; that we can draw and abstract from it 
 conceptions of its origin, that we can begin to 
 trace and divine our own place in it, according to 
 one part — the outward part — of our own nature. 
 This is almost the supreme wonder, that besides 
 the vast subject-matter for knowledge there is in 
 us the faculty for knowledge, the faculty for more 
 than observation — for drawino: from the world clear 
 conceptions, growing though still so small, of the 
 law of its movement and being, that being which 
 stands by virtue of God's continuous creation.
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROBLEMS 77 
 
 " Not by the operation of a law 
 Whose Maker is elsewhere at other work." ^ 
 
 1 am obliged to pass swiftly from a thought 
 which might be developed at great length. Let 
 us approach the world with a spirit set Not the 
 in tune, and then we shall find its hidden ^?^ed°but 
 harmony. There is nothing impossible In^^nT'' 
 for faith in the scene upon which we was amiss. 
 look ; and what we want for Christian assurance 
 is not this or that discovery, interesting as it must 
 be, of the probable form of the starry heavens — 
 this or that proof that no other planet but ours 
 bears a life like our own. These things, interest- 
 ing as they are, are not essential to our religion. 
 What is wanted is that our own organ, which is 
 the most marvellous product of the whole — the 
 organ of knowledge and contemplation — should 
 be set in order progressively, more and more kept 
 in calmness and in reverence and in hope, and 
 should fix itself firmly upon those other intimations 
 of the Divine which are not foreign to any of us ; 
 and, thus reassured, approach the study of the 
 world in freedom and good hope. 
 
 Sp 7p *P Sff »Jp 
 
 1 spoke just now of a typical mind hampered, 
 entrapped, perplexed, not by the spectacle of the 
 world, but by the supposed necessity of this or 
 that abstract formula, such as natural selection, 
 
 1 Robeii Browning, Luria, act v.
 
 78 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 which has been manufactured to express, with an 
 approach to truth, a small part of the many facts 
 before us. 
 
 Let me remind you, in conclusion, of one who 
 is typical of the other sort of mind, Louis Pasteur, 
 in my poor judgement the greatest 
 scientist and the greatest Frenchman of 
 the age that has passed. He was not one tied up 
 in narrow ignorance, his mind frozen by dogma. 
 He was not one, as perhaps you may suppose, 
 like Louis Agassiz, who spent his life in accumu- 
 lating piles of fish and mountains of fossils and 
 manufacturing monographs with a staff of clerks — 
 a giant investigator and no more. Pasteur was 
 one as eminent in theory as was Darwin. He 
 was one who took a foremost place in chemistry 
 before he ever touched the question of living 
 matter. He was the author of a revolutionary 
 change in our conception of certain processes in 
 crystals. He went on to become the master in 
 succession of all that was known and all that is 
 done in respect of fermentation, of the study of 
 disease and of the victory over disease. He moved 
 securely in a great range of the most minute facts. 
 He could lay his hand in a way which seems to 
 us inconceivable upon the secrets of nature. If 
 ever there was a man who might have been 
 absorbed in what he himself has called the enchant- 
 ment or science, it was this man. It ever any
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROBLEMS 79 
 
 man might have been intoxicated by the pride of 
 intellectual success, Pasteur might have been. His 
 manner was dignified and somewhat reserved ; 
 he had the gravity of those whose labours have 
 won great influence. But he was accessible and 
 very considerate to those who came to him to 
 learn, and very patient in showing them the way 
 about his wonderful works. ^ 
 
 But what set him above the dangers of unbelief 
 and made him as much remarkable as a believer as 
 he is remarkable among the explorers of nature, 
 was the practical, the loving purpose of his work. 
 He did not seek to know nature only that he 
 might construct some description of her with which 
 his own name might be imperishably connected. 
 What he desired to do, and what he succeeded in 
 doing, was to combat disease. He has abso- 
 lutely abolished two diseases, and has opened the 
 way towards the fight which has every day more 
 success against almost all the other diseases that 
 we know. Side by side with Lister, he is the 
 man to whom surgery must look back as the 
 one who has made it what it is to-day, with its 
 wonderful success, its wonderful, its justified 
 courage. And what was his life ? Was his life 
 tied up by the bondages of doubt ? Or, by contrast, 
 
 1 Through the kindness of Sir James Paget, 1 had tiic advantage 
 of going with my brother to sec M. Pasttur anil M. Roux in 
 Paris, in i88<;.
 
 8o THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 was his life one intoxicated by little certainties 
 about the origin of metameric segmentation, till 
 he did not care any more about God and the soul ? 
 Not at all. Pasteur speaks like this : — 
 
 " There are two men in each of us, the 
 scientist . . . and the man of belief ; . . . the 
 man who will not die like a vibrio " — (that is 
 the germ, for example, of cholera) — " but who 
 feels that the force that is within him cannot die. 
 The two domains of science and of faith are 
 distinct, and woe to him who tries to let them 
 trespass upon each other, in the so imperfect state 
 of human knowledge." ..." I see everywhere 
 the inevitable expression of the Infinite in the 
 world : through it the supernatural is at the 
 bottom of every heart." ^ 
 
 This is the man who, surrounded by all the 
 honours which the entire scientific world could 
 heap upon him, turned away from his business 
 and his praise to read the life and to admire the 
 virtues of St. Vincent de Paul ; who loved Littre, 
 not because he was the greatest man of intellect 
 of his day, but because, together with his wife, 
 he represented in Pasteur's eyes the twofold worth 
 of human life, in the love of God and the love 
 of the neighbour. This is the man, the leader 
 in what is most characteristic and probably most 
 lasting in our science of nature, who died as he 
 
 • Discours de reception a l' AcaJemie fraii false.
 
 THE DISTRIBUTION OF PROBLEMS 8i 
 
 had lived, a true Frenchman, fixed in honour, 
 fixed in love, and fixed in religion ; with one 
 hand resting upon the symbol of our Saviour's 
 Passion, the other in the hand of his wife — " True 
 to the kindred points of Heaven and Home."^ 
 
 ^ The importance of Pasteur as a Christian has not been sufficiently 
 considered. Some persons obscure the significance of his attitude 
 towards unbelief by laying an exclusive stress upon the fact that his 
 discoveries and cures involve the artificial infection of animals with 
 disease. The name of vivisection (made to cover a wide range of 
 facts from simple inoculation to cruelties which were condemned 
 as heartily by Huxley and other naturalists as by ourselves) Is 
 brought in to alarm the ignorant and to degrade the name of a 
 great man. It may rightly be asked whether experiment upon 
 living animals is ever lawful j and, If so, under what clrcmnstances 
 and for what purposes ; and whether the achievement of a chosen 
 purpose is necessary to render experiment guiltless. These are 
 ethical questions of great importance and urgency, but also of great 
 complexity. And they require much patience and knowledge and 
 clearness of thought for their profitable discussion. But there is no 
 good reason for their being discussed whenever and for whatever 
 purpose Pasteur's name is introduced. At any rate, it is impossible 
 for me to combine their treatment with the argument of this book. 
 The name of Pasteur is here cited as that of a man deeply immersed 
 in the study of Nature, and at the same time standing quite firm 
 in the simplest faith. He believed heartily in the Incarnation, and 
 this fact challenges the attention of all who are interested in the 
 relations between Science and Religion.
 
 IV 
 
 THE MORE GENERAL EFFECT OF 
 EVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE 
 
 The course to stop short of questions concerning revealed religion 
 — The general effect upon religion of evolution theories — 
 Witness of Huxley on theism and evolution — Creation — The 
 Ring and the Book — Evolution before Darwin a fruitless specu- 
 lation — The theory of selection applied too widely — Further 
 application of the figure — Evolution really of advantage to 
 theology — But it has left loss in many minds — The return to 
 faith — The character of religion. 
 
 "The voice of the Lortl cleaveth the flames of fire. The voice of the 
 Lord shaketh the wilderness j the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesli. 
 The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve, and strippeth the forests 
 bare : and in His temple everything saith * Glory.' " — Ps. xxix. 7-9. 
 
 There are the two sides of the revelation of God, 
 God moving in that series of changes which we 
 call nature, and God sitting above the water- 
 floods, still recognized by the believing heart. In 
 the visible scene His thunder shakes the moun- 
 tains, His lightning cleaves the woods, and the 
 operations of organic life are in His Hand ; but 
 above, in His temple, the assemblage of spirits 
 saith " Holy." In that spiritual world which is
 
 EFFECT OF EVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE 83 
 
 built of minds, in the great peace which passes 
 through the storm, " doth every one speak of His 
 glory." So it has ever been. There have always 
 been the two sides of our recognition of God, 
 and, consequently, the possibility of forgetting 
 one of them. And it is good that we should 
 remember that no substantial chang-e is made in 
 the age-long debate between those who regard 
 solely the outward spectacle and those who regard 
 as chiefly significant the inward sense of God — 
 that no substantial change is made by any difference 
 in our conception of the details of the outward 
 scene. One often hears that science has made 
 this and that change for religion, with regard to 
 questions about which, as a scientific philosopher 
 says, science can neither allow nor disallow the 
 affirmative answer of faith. I would even quarrel 
 with the statement, for example, that science has 
 driven the dryads from the wood. It was always 
 known by the wise that trees were made of wood 
 all through ; and men chose, wrongly as we think, 
 to imagine some of them also to be inhabited by 
 living sprites. Our knowledge of the texture of 
 the wood, our knowledge of the current of the 
 sap, has neither put the dryad further from us 
 nor brought her nearer. It was always known 
 that nature was natural all through, that stuff was 
 stuff; and men will have, together with their 
 conception, whatever it may he^ of the stuff, various
 
 84 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 conclusions, based upon a different set of con- 
 siderations, about what there may be besides the 
 stuff. It is not science, it is Christianity, which 
 has driven the dryad from the wood and Pan out 
 of the thicket. For all that science knows, Pan 
 may be lurking now in Kensington Gardens. It 
 has nothing to say in affirmation or in denial of 
 such a presence. 
 
 ***** 
 In the range of subjects to which, if we had 
 time, we might attend, it is necessary to make a 
 The course Strict Selection. And after the best 
 ofqllStKn? thought I can give to the matter, I have 
 concerning come to the conclusion that durinor this 
 
 revealed to 
 
 religion. brief Series of lectures in Lent, of which 
 next Sunday's is the last, it is our interest to keep 
 to those questions which lie on the hither, or, if 
 the word is better, the further side of positive 
 dogmatic religion. We must think, I mean, about 
 the conclusions of science as they are supposed to 
 conflict with natural religion, with theism, with the 
 belief in God on general grounds, and leave for 
 some other time anything that we may find to say 
 with regard to the opposition which may lie between 
 science and the positive statements of the Bible. 
 And here again I would remind you that Christianity 
 is much more than, or at any rate something quite 
 different from, a simple theism. It cannot be 
 supported on the grounds of a free idealism alone,
 
 EFFECT OF EVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE 85 
 
 which asserts, against the pressure of sense, the 
 higher authority and significance of the spiritual 
 being. That line of thought, inexpressibly valu- 
 able as it is, will not carry us all the way to 
 Christianity. For Christianity, besides being an 
 idealism, is also a positive statement about facts 
 in a time series, about things which have taken 
 place within the history of the world we see. We 
 must always, therefore, in our minds divide those 
 two aspects of our religion for purposes of defence. 
 There is on the one hand theism, that affirmative 
 conclusion concerning the world, the only really 
 affirmative conclusion, that the world is somewhat, 
 the world is spiritual, the world is personal in 
 its root and heart ; and on the other hand there 
 is the defence, which belongs so very largely to 
 critical theology, of the statements, the positive 
 and historical statements, of the Bible and the 
 Creed. Let us, therefore, be content for the 
 present to leave these latter on one side. 
 
 Fixing our minds, then, wholly upon the general 
 belief in God, let us ask once more — what differ- 
 ence has been made to this belief by the 
 
 1 • r 1 • J r 1 The general 
 
 doctrines or evolution and or natural effect upon 
 
 ,. 5T-- • • rij Mj religion of 
 
 selection : Lven in view or the detailed evolution 
 
 W,, , theories, 
 
 ems, it IS well worth 
 
 while to spend time upon the more general 
 
 question ; for if we gain any clearer hold on our 
 
 own belief in God, if we see it riding more free
 
 86 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 than we once did of the supposed terrors of the 
 detailed statements of science, we shall be in a 
 much better position to consider the Book which 
 comes to us in the name of God, And, further, 
 if we gain a stronger hold upon the faith in 
 the dignity of our own nature, and trust more 
 courageously the inward witness of our con- 
 sciences, we shall be in a better position to con- 
 sider what kind of transaction revelation may be 
 — what it must be if it really comes to pass ; 
 after what fashion God is likely to speak to real 
 spiritual selves whom He has by His will called 
 into being. Therefore the improvement of god- 
 liness and the improvement of manfulness, an 
 increased hold of theism and an increased belief 
 in human nature, are alike of advantage when 
 we wish to approach special points of positive 
 religion. 
 
 Last time I suggested, by a very general form of 
 description, what is the teaching of evolution, what 
 is the teaching of natural selection; and I submitted 
 to you that evolution as such has no quarrel with 
 theism as such, but that it is possible to raise 
 something like a debate between theism as such 
 and natural selection as a special doctrine of the 
 way in which evolution has been guided. And, 
 if possible, on a future occasion I shall go on to 
 say that evolution in its broadest expression may 
 be thought to have a real debate with the positive
 
 EFFECT OF EVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE 87 
 
 statements of the first Books of the Bible. There 
 are, then, in my mind, two debates — the debate 
 between theism as such and natural selection, the 
 special theory of evolution ; and a debate between 
 evolution as such and that religion of the Bible 
 and the Church which contains a special account 
 of the way in which God has actually worked. 
 
 With regard to theism, I may give you one 
 more witness in support of a contention which I 
 have not at all argued out before you — witness of 
 the witness of Huxley, who, towards theism^and 
 the end of his life, took occasion to say ^^°'"<^'°"- 
 that the doctrine of theism is neither stronger nor 
 weaker for the theory of evolution ; no stronger 
 and no weaker, in his phrase, than on the day in 
 which it was invented. That is an important 
 support of my own opinion that theism, as such, 
 does not come into direct collision at all with 
 the doctrine of evolution stated generally. But I 
 am not at all sure that Huxley would have said 
 the same thing in 1857. I wish I had had the 
 leisure to look up certain statements which are 
 put together in the Life of Huxley about it ; but 
 my impression is that at that time he regarded the 
 belief in God as a necessary hypothesis which had 
 to be accepted in order to account for the variety 
 of the world.' 1 think that between 1857 and 
 
 I The principal passages will be found in the Extract from " The 
 Reception of the ' Origin of Species,' " ami in a Letter to Sir Charles
 
 88 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 1859 he was eagerly seeking for some alternative 
 hypothesis which, in his phrase, would do away 
 with the necessity of believing in " creation " — an 
 employment of the word " creation " to which 
 Christians find it very difficult to give a meaning. 
 For, of course, we mean by creation that 
 unimaginable, totally inexpressible, relation which 
 exists between the infinite and the finite. 
 
 Creation. ^ • ^ • ,r • ■>■, 
 
 JDut to some biologists "creation seems 
 to stand for a set of facts lying inside natural history 
 and about which biology ought to be able to give 
 an account. We do not mean the same thing by 
 creation. But if we may translate his statement 
 into terms a little more intelligible, he meant that the 
 doctrine that God has guided the evolution of the 
 world will account for the fact that it has grown up 
 into an order, into a cosmos ; and that if we could 
 find some mechanical process by which of necessity 
 varieties might appear in the world, we should 
 pro tanto have got rid, as I said last Sunday, of 
 the need of the belief in a Person guiding the 
 chanores of which we see the results. 
 
 Now, when the doctrine of natural selection 
 came before Huxley, at first he was very in- 
 credulous of its truth ; but in time he saw the 
 srreat force which belongs to the treatment which 
 
 O CI 
 
 Darwin has given to the subject, and he accepted 
 
 Lyell, June 25, 1859; both in Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, 
 Eversley edition, 1903, vol. i. pp. 241 ff. and 249 ff.
 
 EFFECT OF EVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE 89 
 
 the theory provisionally. And we may say that 
 he accepted it as an alternative hypothesis, account- 
 ing for the guidance of evolution, and therefore 
 doing away with the necessity of belief in the 
 personal will of God as ruling the process. 
 
 And here let me in passing recall your 
 attention to what I am sure I must have spoken 
 of before — the peril in which all religion stands 
 which regards God in this light, as part of a 
 working hypothesis to explain a series of physical 
 changes. If this is our religion, then just in so 
 far as there is suggested a mechanical self-acting 
 process by which the appearance of guidance might 
 be produced, so far also we lose hold of our 
 need of God and our belief in God. And there- 
 fore it is very important continually to rebase our 
 religion, not upon any such narrow conception of 
 God as a force intervening to bridge the gaps of 
 physical sequence, but rather as One Who finds 
 His primary witness, though by no means His 
 only witness, in the wonder of our own moral, 
 spiritual, and intellectual nature ; Who has, as 1 
 think Emerson says, an inlet for the eternal 
 wisdom in the heart of every man. 
 
 Now I wish to ask your attention to a point 
 which I mentioned briefly when first I ^, „. 
 
 -' " The Ring 
 
 had the honour of addressino; you — one and the 
 
 1-^11 Book." 
 
 part of the reason why religion has lost 
 
 more in its conflict with science than it ought to
 
 90 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 have lost according to the rules of debate. And 
 if you will have patience with me, I will get to 
 it by considering first the change which has taken 
 place in our scientific conception of the world by 
 a process for which, in my own mind, I have long 
 been accustomed to find a parallel and an image in 
 the process described by Browning in the beginning 
 of his poem, 'The Ring and the Book. Let me 
 remind you of the opening lines of that poem. 
 I think they help us quite admirably to understand 
 the changes which have taken place in our con- 
 ception of the world. He describes, you know, 
 how the chased ring of Roman work, " made to 
 match by Castellani's imitative craft Etrurian 
 circlets," is formed out of a piece of gold too thin, 
 too soft to bear working. There is not enough 
 of the precious metal, and what there is is of too 
 frail a fibre. How, then, does the ring get its 
 carving, its completeness \ — 
 
 " There's one trick, 
 Craftsmen instruct me, one approved device, 
 And but one, fits such slivers of pure gold 
 As this was, — such mere oozings from the mine, . . . 
 To bear the file's tooth and the hammer's tap : 
 Since hammer needs must widen out the round, 
 And file emboss it fine with lily flowers. 
 Ere the stuff grow a ring-thing right to wear. 
 That trick is, the artificer melts up wax 
 With honey so to speak ; he mingles gold
 
 EFFECT OF EVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE 91 
 
 With gold's alloy, and duly tempering both, 
 Effects a jnanageable mass, then works : 
 But his work ended, once the thing a ring, 
 Oh, there's repristination ! " 
 
 (which means, I believe, a return to the gold's 
 first condition — ) 
 
 " Just a spirt 
 O' the proper fiery acid o'er its face, 
 And forth the alloy unfastened flies in fume, 
 While self-sufficient now the shape remains. 
 The rondure brave, the lilied loveliness. 
 Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore. 
 Prime nature with an added artistry. 
 No carat lost, and you have gained a ring ! 
 What of it ? 'Tis a figure, a symbol, say ; 
 A thing's sign : now for the thing signified." 
 
 The notion of evolution had, I venture to 
 say again, haunted for generations the minds 
 of men, but it found no substantial 
 
 _^ Evolution 
 
 p;round to rest upon. 1 here was too before Dar- 
 
 11 ^ r r TT J 1 win a fruit- 
 
 small a supply or ract. Here and there lessspecuia- 
 
 . ^ . , • . tion. 
 
 were signincant circumstances in organic 
 life, but the whole collection was far too slender 
 to shape out into a theory which could stand by 
 itself. We had " mere oozings from the mine ; " 
 here a touch and there a touch, touches which 
 people believed in much more in the seventeenth 
 century than they did at the beginning of the
 
 92 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 Victorian era. But evolution remained, for all 
 the efforts for example of Lamarck, a totally 
 unfruitful speculation. Science, so far as science 
 advanced in biology, advanced quite independently 
 of this dream of developement which was flying 
 about in the upper air of thought. That remained 
 a fantasy, an amusement.^ It was supported only 
 by strange and whimsical theories like those which 
 you may read in T^he Vestiges of Creation^ which 
 now, I think, no scientific man would hold to 
 contain anything of scientific worth. But then 
 came the conception of natural selection, through 
 Darwin, through Wallace. And as soon as this 
 conception, — which I positively must not attempt 
 
 ^ The same phenomenon, viz. a theory one day to be accepted 
 on the surest grounds but at first partly recommended on the most 
 fanciful, is presented in the De Re-volutionihiis Orhiiim of Copernicus. 
 I owe my acquaintance with this book, and very much besides, to 
 Mr. Wilfrid Ward. 
 
 Great theories, like great men, seem sometimes to have been 
 strengthened by a youth of play ; they have had their toys as 
 Wellington his bandalore and tea-tray sledge. 
 
 One may almost say of modern science in general that its day of 
 solid achievement was preceded by a day of light-hearted or of sombre 
 fancy. Van Hcimont's speculative search for the Vital Principle 
 resulted in the discovery of fixed gases, and thus contributed largely 
 to our present doctrine of the constitution of matter. 
 
 It seems that, in respect of material things, we have an inkling 
 of truth before the discovery of facts, and arrive at some right con- 
 clusions before we possess their premisses. But there is generally an 
 interval of oblivion or discredit between the prophetic fancy and the 
 sober hypothesis capable of verification. 
 
 Speculations which at present are disfigured by bad science and 
 bad logic may some day prove to have been forenmners, at an 
 interval, of a real system of knowledge co-ordinating real evidence.
 
 EFFECT OF EVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE 93 
 
 to unfold, — showed a method by which the flood 
 of life, the existence of which must always be pre- 
 supposed, gained the specialization which we now 
 see, as soon as this conception was launched, 
 although it was launched as an unproved hypothesis, 
 it at once put the facts wonderfully into order. 
 Further — and notice this especially — the theory not 
 only set forth in an intelligible form all that was 
 then known of the appearances in organic life which 
 suggest their origin by descent with modification, 
 but disclosed and drew together multitudes of other 
 facts which had before been totally unsuspected. 
 For example, the whole range of facts which is 
 generalized under the term "geographical distribu- 
 tion " formerly contributed nothing to a systematic 
 conception of animal life. The strange appearances 
 which we now call " protective mimicry " were 
 also utterly inexplicable, and lent nothing to any 
 system. They were the works of the Creator 
 indeed, and good men then, as now, reverenced 
 them as marks of His Hand — that glorious Hand 
 which now, as much as then, we may still recognize 
 in them. But these special facts contributed 
 nothing to a biological conception of the origin 
 of animal and vegetable life. When natural 
 selection came in, with its notion of a surplus 
 multiplication of individuals leading up to a 
 struggle of selective elimination, then at once all 
 those strange facts, and other facts equally remote
 
 94 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 and strange, such as the phenomena of parasitism 
 and symbiosis ^ and other unusual conditions of 
 life, not only received an explanation, but them- 
 selves yielded enormous support to the new theory, 
 and in doing so made evolution in general stronger 
 in its hold upon men's minds, stronger in its actual 
 claim to probable certainty. The same thing may 
 be said of the facts of geology, the series in time 
 of organic forms ; and again of certain facts of 
 what is called ontogeny — that is, those parallel 
 changes within the individual life which reflect 
 and, as it were, shortly recapitulate the stages of 
 the descent which makes the history of the species. 
 All these tacts received a new clearness, a 
 luminous explanation, and themselves in turn 
 built up the probability of the general doctrine 
 that organic life as we see it is the result of 
 the descent from simpler forms accompanied by 
 modification. Darwin himself, not only at the 
 beginning, but at the end of his life, said that he 
 had no concern with the theological conclusions 
 which might be drawn from his biological doctrine. 
 Darwin was himself a Little-Darwinite. He had 
 no notion of being the king of an empire of 
 thought. He had no notion of his principles 
 being taken out from their proper connexion 
 with organic life, where we actually know that 
 there is excessive multiplication and so forth, and 
 
 ' See note on p. 263.
 
 EFFECT OF EVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE 95 
 
 taken over to be a kind of formula fit to explain 
 all things that are. 
 
 Such a notion was far from Darwin's mind ; 
 and even with regard to a much more limited 
 speculation he said that he was himself The theory 
 unconcerned with the question whether appiil?tCo 
 or no all the forms of life were descended widely, 
 from a single primordial form. That, he said in 
 effect, is a matter of probability with which I am 
 not concerned : what he wished to do was to suggest 
 an explanation of a certain range of facts — namely, 
 those which indicate the origin of species. 
 
 So then, we may say, the probable hypothesis 
 of natural selection, which remains to-day only 
 probable, and which Huxley to the last said lacked 
 that consistency which would enable it to pass from 
 the region of speculation to the region of scientific 
 dogma — this theory, itself only probable, has given 
 something almost more than probability to the 
 wider theory of evolution. It has been like the 
 alloy added to the pure gold. You have your 
 small supply of " pure crude fact," unfit to bear 
 the file's tooth and the hammer's tap. But put 
 something into it, something which is not " pure 
 crude fact," something which is the manufactured 
 product of ingenuity ; and this thing, though 
 not itself part of the undeniable facts of nature, 
 though it was rather " gold's alloy than gold 
 itself," yet enabled the scanty supply of gold
 
 96 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 to gather indeed something of additional mass 
 and bulk, but also to gain, for the time at least, a 
 new consistency which enabled it to undergo the 
 handling of constructive thought. And if that 
 process of criticism which has been going on so 
 long goes further still, and we are obliged at last 
 to acknowledge that natural selection does not 
 possess that high degree of probability or, on the 
 other hand, that fitness for general application 
 which we once hoped, nevertheless the advantage 
 for evolution which arises from Darwin's theory 
 will not be simply cancelled. What I submit to 
 you is this, that, suppose the biological criticism 
 of such writers as Semper, or Cope, or Eimer, 
 or Cunningham proved to be (as I am far from 
 saying it is) " the proper fiery spirit " by which 
 " the alloy unfastened flies in fume," we shall still 
 have our ring. Suppose we have to say good-bye 
 to that special theory of the manner of evolution, 
 we shall not have to say good-bye to our new 
 security in the probability of evolution in general. 
 It has gained in the interval too many new sup- 
 ports for that. That, then, is my little story of 
 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 Now for a still further application of it. Just 
 Further ^^ cvolution will wake up surer from 
 o?the^^'°" its dream of natural selection, even if 
 figure. that proves to be a dream, so there is 
 
 something which will be left behind and which is
 
 EFFECT OF EVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE 97 
 
 left behind in theology, only in this case it is 
 something bad as well as something good. What 
 has, in fact, been the later history of your doc- 
 trine of evolution by natural selection ? Why, 
 this : you have applied it as if it were a finished 
 weapon with a cutting edge which could be put 
 to any substance, quite forgetting that its sureness 
 arises from the actual facts of organic life, and 
 has, so far as we know, no application whatever to 
 the great facts which lie beyond ; for example, in 
 stellar astronomy.^ Having gained this formula 
 of the ' creation ' of a special thing by the elimina- 
 tion of the rest, having acquired the generalized 
 thought that things are what they are, because 
 if they were not what they are they could 
 not be anything at all, some have proceeded to 
 apply the thought, as if it were a sure mathe- 
 matical formula or solution, to explain the general 
 structure of creation. In the name of evolution, 
 a fact of organic life on this planet, we are invited 
 to believe that all things come to pass by the 
 inevitable succession of inevitable changres. In 
 fact, we are asked in terms of a modern and 
 special theory concerning organic life in particular, 
 to let ourselves drift back to the belief in chance 
 which was sung long ago, and better than ever 
 since, by Lucretius. 
 
 ^ The doctrine of E-uolution has, of course, in the department of 
 astronomy, one of its greatest chapters, the nebular theory of Kant. 
 But this has nothing to do with natural selection. 
 
 II
 
 98 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 Now, that involves a perfectly unjustifiable 
 step in logic, in argument. Here we have a plain 
 Evolution case in which the thing which has its 
 adv^tage origin in a particular range of circum- 
 to theology, st-g^ncgs is endowed by thought with an 
 effect in totally different regions where we have 
 no proof of its action. And then, further, another 
 part of the added alloy was the statement that the 
 conception of evolution was in conflict with 
 theism — that the conception of natural selection 
 was in conflict with the idea of creation. Men 
 have been busily examining these statements for 
 years past, and they have shown — I think those 
 who have followed the matter will see, with a high 
 degree of success — that they have no foundation 
 at all in genuine thought. And, on the contrary, 
 theology finds itself, where it is seriously at work, 
 immensely helped in its deeper studies, in its 
 approach to the thought of the relation between 
 God and the world in general, by this very con- 
 ception of evolution ; by the thought that what 
 we see is not a perfect thing which shows its 
 destined end, but a growing thing whose nature 
 is to be guessed by the indications of its purpose, 
 and not by the present and evident successes of 
 its labour. We are able, in the very name of 
 evolution, to check those who would demand a 
 present summing-up of all the evidences of God's 
 purpose in the world, who hold, as it were, a knife
 
 EFFECT OF EVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE 99 
 
 to our throats, and say, " Confess that He Is either 
 powerless or bad, since He made so bad a world." 
 It is precisely in the name of evolution, it is by 
 virtue of just this conception of change still in 
 progress, that we answer that nobody is ready for 
 such an alternative. And the answer is needed, 
 for in the world of thought there are spectacles 
 which are rather like what we remember, some of 
 us, long ago at school. Cast your mind back to 
 the first beginnings of education. Remember 
 the governess or the master at the preparatory 
 school giving out a problem of mental arithmetic, 
 or writing out on the board a long sum for 
 addition or division. Can you not also recall the 
 ardent infant who shoots out an arm to say that 
 he knows the answer, meeting the calm rebuke, 
 " My boy, 1 have not yet finished setting the 
 question " ? That suggests the answer which we 
 must give to those who demand from us a sudden 
 reply to the alternative, " Is God weak, or is He 
 less than good ? One answer or the other you 
 must make your own, when you see the world as 
 it is." To this we must say, "We are not pre- 
 pared to give you any answer on these grounds, 
 because the question itself is yet a-setting, and we 
 know not by that kind of inspection how it may 
 turn out." If we know, it is by another road ; 
 if we know, it is by a spiritual reaction between 
 our spirit and that Spirit which is our Father ; it is
 
 100 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 by the answer of love to a love which makes 
 itself felt through the storm, through the cloud, 
 of physical experience. 
 
 But, to return, further examination abolished 
 the supposed opposition between evolution and 
 creation. Nevertheless, some mischief remains. 
 We have not really lost, but the impression 
 remains with us that we have lost. There are 
 multitudes of Christians who have felt the sup- 
 posed difficulty — who have taken in, so to speak, 
 that added thing, not gold, but gold's alloy ; whose 
 minds have been carved, not to the fair ring with 
 lilied form, but into a grotesque image of doubt 
 or despair. 
 
 But when through careful criticism, when 
 through devout thought, when through the 
 ^ . . labours of philosophy, the alien thing:. 
 
 But it has ^ . "^ . . . . ^ 
 
 left loss in the supposcd anti-thcolomcal implication 
 
 many minds. .. . in- ■ r >» 
 
 of science, " unfastened flies in fume, 
 the shape remains. The man does not, by the 
 elimination of error, get back to his old positive 
 attitude ; he does not thereby recover his peace of 
 mind, his prayer. He is willing to admit that 
 what he supposed to be a conclusion destructive of 
 belief is not, indeed, on inspection, destructive — 
 
 " Just a spirt 
 O' the proper fiery acid o'er its face, 
 And forth the alloy unfastened flies in fume " 
 
 but he is not as he was.
 
 EFFECT OF EVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE loi 
 
 You have the old substance, perhaps, and 
 a ring to boot, as it seems ; but your gold ? 
 There is a work of art, indeed, but a work of 
 most meretricious and miserable and confining 
 art ; not something more^ by reason of this intru- 
 sion of an alien thing now withdrawn, but some- 
 thing less. For the thing added has altered the 
 specific gravity and the centre of gravity of the 
 mass of life ; and, teaching it new dependences, 
 has left it, in withdrawing, unbalanced. I am not 
 careful to maintain the consistency of my figure. 
 It is tho. fact 1 aim at — the fact that the destruction, 
 the extraction, of error, does not of necessity leave 
 the old truth triumphant. The substance of life 
 is for the time impoverished, its energy weakened 
 by the double process. For a man whose faith 
 has been checked by intellectual negations, the 
 cure is not found when his intellectual conclusion 
 has been reversed. There is still a long labour of 
 doubt and difficulty. He has to pass through 
 great and dark chambers of search. He must 
 touch ground in the mere acknowledgment of 
 ignorance concerning God before, in a renewed 
 freedom, he is able once more to apprehend those 
 ancient foundations of our faith which God has 
 planted in ourselves. 
 
 1 might most easily — too easily — give you out 
 of the stores of my own memory, but also of my 
 own most sensitive affections, an account of such
 
 102 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 a life as this, in the end triumphant over doubt ; 
 a life fit to be remembered, at least by name — 
 the life of George Romanes. But I cannot bring 
 myself to do so, because I know about it very 
 well. It is important, however, to remember in 
 ourselves, and to remember in our sympathy with 
 the society to which we belong, this process which 
 I have named — well or ill — the process of the 
 Ring and the Book, the sad result which comes 
 from an intrusion of alien matter, but which does 
 not depart when the intrusion is withdrawn. 
 
 And so, if there be any here who have felt the 
 pressure of that doubt which comes from a new 
 The return interest in outward things, who have 
 to faith. thought that perhaps the mechanical 
 explanation of organic varieties would carry them, 
 and ought to carry them, to a necessitarian ex- 
 planation of the whole of being ; if there are any 
 who are not sufficiently awake to the general 
 wonder of things, who do not feel, as Coleridge 
 felt, that the mystery of mysteries is that there 
 should be anything at all and not nothing ; whose 
 souls, asleep to the great marvel of existence itself, 
 have been absorbed in considering the process of a 
 supposed mechanical manufacture ; — these cannot 
 find their safety or their renewed religion only by 
 a process of argument. All that argument can 
 do for them is to clear a space where life may act 
 again. Argum ent is like the whip who cracks his
 
 EFFECT OF EVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE 103 
 
 thong to keep the hounds outside a given line, that 
 within it men may move at ease. And so the sup- 
 posed argumentative necessity of unbelief is to be 
 met by the richly evidenced argumentative liberty 
 of religion ; but its effect is to be reversed only 
 by the rising again in personal adventure of the 
 soul towards God. 
 
 For religion is not, like natural science, a 
 conclusion which arises from the accumulated 
 possession of a great number of par- 
 
 . . . . . The charac- 
 
 ticulars in experience ; nor is it the terof 
 
 ^ r ^ • ■ religion. 
 
 necessary result or a clear mspection 
 of our inward life, a law of thought without 
 which nobody can think at all. It is no mere 
 philosophical conclusion, even if that conclusion 
 be theism. But it is the reaction of a spiritual 
 being to the love of the Spirit which has created 
 him. It is the root most inward, most central, 
 of attachment between the man and God. And 
 it is from this root, firmly held, deeply planted, 
 entirely trusted, that we see grow out, more 
 or less gradually, all the special affirmations 
 of revealed religion. It is to this almost native 
 commerce between Himself and His creature that 
 the Creator appeals in what is called revelation. 
 It is upon this sympathy that the Saviour makes 
 His claim. It is in virtue of this kinship, how- 
 ever obscured, that we recognize that He is indeed 
 the only-begotten Son ; that He is that perfect
 
 104 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 Other, yet the Same, Who is alone worthy to be 
 the outcome of the perfect God. 
 
 It is by this path of apprehension that we see 
 that the created finite thing cannot look to find 
 the evidence of its goodness in a mere flawless 
 integrity as if it could be perfect by itself; but 
 finds the evidence of its goodness in its own 
 groaning ; for the perfect God cannot make another 
 being infinite, perfect, all-holy, like Himself That 
 would be to call into being another God, which is 
 impossible. Nor would this second Existence be 
 a creature, for it would be infinite as God is, 
 eternal a parte anteriori. But the good thing He 
 has made is constituted non in perfectione^ sed in 
 capacitate recipiendi perfectionem ; not in itself com- 
 plete and good, but in a wonderful condition to 
 receive the adorable fulness of Him Who has 
 made it, that it might be empty for Himself, Who 
 has given it a reality which consists, or which 
 finds itself, in being directed towards Him, and 
 a destiny which completes itself in self-emptying 
 and in the total receiving of Him Who is alone 
 all Good.
 
 AGNOSTICISM AND DETERMINISM 
 
 A twofold doubt — I. Is science the only knowledge ? — With divided 
 knowledge we must be uncontented but not impatient — II. Is 
 Jaw exclusive of all freedom ? — Science has extended the range 
 and made more intimate the penetration of law — Religion sup- 
 posed to be in regions outside law — The extension of law will 
 go further — A suggestion — Science must speak in the mode ot 
 necessity — Freedom is a fact for experience — Freedom seems 
 to grow where law grows clear — Example of agriculture — Two 
 primitive extremes of thought — The freedom of God — Ward's 
 image of the mice in the piano — Determinism a conclusion 
 from limited experience. 
 
 "Doth the plowman plow continually to sow? Doth lie continually 
 open and break the cloils of his ground ? When he hath made plain the 
 face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, 
 and put in the wheat in rows and the barley in the appointed place and the 
 spelt in the border thereof? For his God doth instruct him aright, and 
 doth teach him. For the fitches are not threshed with a sharp threshing 
 instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin, but the 
 fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. Bread corn 
 is ground 5 for he will not ever be threshing it : and though the wheel of his 
 cart and his horses scatter it, he doth not grind it. This also cometh forth 
 from the Lord of Hosts, Which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in 
 wisdom." — IsA. xxviii. 24-29 (R.V.). 
 
 This also cometh forth from the Lord of Hosts. 
 " It came from Him," says a commentator, "and 
 is an illustration of His own method of working."
 
 io6 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 To-day, In attempting a kind of close, though 
 not a full close, it is well that we should seek to 
 press on to the fundamental fear which we have 
 with regard to natural science. 
 
 Beneath all special statements of doubt, and 
 remaining after we have said all we can in special 
 A twofold defence of faith, there exists, it seems to 
 doubt. j^g^ jj^ many minds a twofold suspicion 
 
 or fear, or perhaps in some minds it takes the 
 form of a twofold hope. There is, first, a suspicion 
 concerning knowledge that science alone is real 
 knowledge, and that the other things which go 
 by the name of knowledge are only fancies spun 
 from our own minds. And the second suspicion 
 is one concerning the world, that that also is a 
 fixed and ultimate scene, a reality absolutely 
 determined in its general history and in all its 
 details ; that the science which seems sometimes 
 to be the only real knowledge corresponds to a 
 universe of law from which freedom is excluded. 
 Those seem to me two propositions in which one 
 mieht state the fundamental fear : that science 
 alone is real knowledge, and that it corresponds 
 to a universe of law from which freedom is 
 excluded. The claim for natural science that 
 it is the only and the sufficient knowledge is 
 called, by a singular modesty, Agnosticis'm. The 
 denial of freedom fits one of the senses in which 
 the word Determinism is used.
 
 AGNOSTICISM AND DETERMINISM 107 
 
 On the first point, that of knowledge, I only 
 offer one or two headings of thought. There will 
 be no time to develope these at all. But, i._is sci- 
 on the other hand, I dare not leave them oni^y know- 
 unspoken because there has been some- ^ ^^ 
 thing to object to, even from my own point of 
 view, in what I have already said. 
 
 We have tried to speak of the reality of 
 spiritual knowledge. We have tried to show 
 that our interest does not lie in the disparage- 
 ment of any particular theory concerning the 
 world. Indeed, for my own part, I have for a 
 good many years been accustomed, whenever 
 I have had occasion to express myself on these 
 subjects, to minimise the difficulties which attend 
 scientific theory ; always, for example, to make the 
 most of the certainty of evolution, the most I 
 can of the probability of natural selection, lest it 
 should be supposed that we have a theological 
 interest in weakening either of those theories. It 
 is very important that we should not seem to 
 have a theological interest in weakening any 
 particular theory about the physical world. But 
 we have a theological interest and a spiritual 
 interest in protesting against that being taken 
 for certain which is uncertain, whatever it is. 
 
 In the second place, our interest does not lie 
 in the disparagement of natural or physical know- 
 ledge in nreneral and as such. It does not lie in
 
 io8 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 the direction, that is to say, of scepticism, of 
 idealism as it is misunderstood by the common- 
 sense man. I must remind you that idealism in 
 Berkeley's or in any form — the statement that 
 the criterion of reality is not in outward things — 
 suggests to the plain man the notion that we 
 deny the reality of the external world or the 
 soundness of the knowledge which comes from 
 it. That notion ought to have been by this 
 time driven away, but it is not so wholly. No 
 idealist has any interest in denying what the 
 plain man means by reality. We think with him 
 that his reality which is phenomenal reality is 
 phenomenally real. 
 
 Religion or spiritual thought has no interest, 
 any more than philosophic idealism, in disparaging 
 natural knowledge in general. 
 
 Nor, in the third place, has it any interest in 
 segregating the two kinds of knowledge. And 
 this is the point where I have to make my ex- 
 planation. For I artlessly quoted an artless 
 phrase of M. Pasteur in which he speaks of the 
 two kinds of knowledge as being quite separate. 
 I have, therefore, to add that I did not mean that 
 I thought his expression philosophically satisfactory 
 or sound. On the contrary, thought must always 
 press on towards a unity. It must never be con- 
 tented without a unity. It must never think to 
 abide in a state in which the knowledge of the
 
 AGNOSTICISM AND DETERMINISM 109 
 
 world is one thing and the knowledge of God is 
 another thing, or suppose that these may be kept 
 apart in sealed chambers. That would be what 
 is called obscurantism, or sometimes, and quite 
 wrongly, mysticism ; the notion that religious 
 knowledge has nothing to do with natural know- 
 ledge and need not be conciliated with it, but 
 rides free in a region where it can neither be 
 proved nor disproved, in the air. No ; thought 
 must never be contented with less than a complete 
 unification of knowledge. 
 
 But to refuse to be contented is one thing, and to be 
 impatient is another} We are not to be contented, 
 but we are not to be impatient. In w^ithdivid- 
 fact, uncontentment itself (for we can pdknow- 
 
 ' V ledge we 
 
 scarcely call it discontentment) carries must be un- 
 
 J ^ ' contented 
 
 with it patience of this kind, because, but not 
 
 . , r 1 r 1 • impatient. 
 
 precisely on account or the tact that it 
 desires to co-ordinate all the things that it knows, 
 it determines not to let go of any one of the things 
 that it knows. It is just on account of the duty 
 of unifying thought that we must keep fast hold 
 of parts of thought which seem to be separate 
 one from another. We must not try to reach 
 a unity by defining as outside reality the things 
 which we cannot understand. You know very 
 well a theory of the Church which arrives at a 
 
 1 "To hope and not to be impatient is really to believe '' (George 
 Meredith, Harry Richmond^ chap. iii.).
 
 no THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 conception of its accomplished unity by the 
 simple process of defining as outside the Church 
 every one who does not agree with a certain part 
 of the Church. A man can see a harmonious, 
 indeed an unanimous, Church on that plan, by 
 selecting the part which agrees with himself as 
 the true Church and saying that the other parts 
 do not belong to the true unity. But he who 
 seeks after a real unity of the Church which can 
 include all who belong to Christ must take 
 exactly the opposite course ; and, being discon- 
 tented with the disunion of the Church, he must 
 be patient with the disturbances of the Church. 
 
 Even so in general thought, it is the main 
 duty of thought to arrive at a unity, and on that 
 very ground we have to be patient with dis- 
 crepancies. We do not mean by this that a final 
 philosophical solution is discovered by stating 
 two kinds of knowledge, but we point to a 
 circumstance in experience and we point to a 
 rule of conduct. And so in what I have said at 
 this time and at other times about patience with 
 regard to discontinuous portions of knowledge, it 
 would be very unfortunate for me if I were taken 
 to mean that we must be permanently and, to 
 use a convenient phrase, absolutely contented with 
 it. We seek after an absolute and final unity 
 which we heartily believe to be God, but there is a 
 ■proximate plurality in experience ; and just because
 
 AGNOSTICISM AND DETERMINISM iii 
 
 we seek after a final unity we must be patient 
 for a time with this proximate plurality. Indeed, 
 the perception of difference is itself the implicit 
 possession of a unifying principle, and it is the 
 work of thought to render that implicit unifying 
 principle explicit in explanation. 
 
 Now we pass to the second thought — the 
 thought of the uniformity of nature. Is not 
 science, and science alone, in relation to 
 
 . r 1 1 • • n.— Is law 
 
 a universe of law ; and is there room in exclusive of 
 that universe for the freedom of which 
 faith speaks ? 
 
 We agreed long ago that there could be no 
 religion unless we believed in freedom in some 
 true sense. Now I will go further, and say that 
 there can be no conduct YiiXhont: a belief in freedom. 
 And in those two points I shall carry everybody 
 here with me. But I shall not carry everybody 
 with me in a third assertion — namely, that 
 without freedom there can be no knowledge. But 
 I submit to you that if all that we think is deter- 
 mined mechanically and arises as a necessary 
 reaction from the world in which we live ; if 
 what we call our thoughts is nothing: more than 
 the resonance of a bell which must needs sound 
 in tune with the vibrations which are round about 
 it ; — how does there come to be such a thing as 
 error ? How does there come to be such a thing 
 as the progressive correction of error ? How
 
 112 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 does there come to be such a thing as falsehood ? 
 Even in this realm of apprehension, of knowledge, 
 I am more and more convinced that there is a 
 place for will, a place for freedom. And it is by 
 the exercise of the will, though a subtle exercise 
 which does not seem like mere purpose — we may 
 rather call it attention — it is by an exercise which 
 is fundamentally free and personal that knowledge 
 itself advances. 
 
 I admit, then, that if science is indeed in 
 relation to a universe of law in which there is 
 no room for freedom, we may altogether throw 
 up the cause of religion. 
 
 In respect of this matter, what has science 
 done ? In the first place, it has extended our 
 Science has perception of the range of law. It has 
 the mn^e niade us see law extending over regions 
 and made ^f reality wherc we used not to recoo-nize 
 
 more mti- J o 
 
 mate the \^^ jj-j ^\^q second place, it has made law 
 
 penetration . 
 
 of law. appear more, penetrating^ more intimately 
 
 applied to the details of the world. It presses 
 forward towards a time when there shall be, on 
 the one hand, no region of fact outside the realm 
 of law ; towards a time when, on the other hand, 
 there shall be no movement so small as to escape 
 the mesh of law. It has a tendency to increase 
 the range of law in our conception of the world, 
 and to increase the penetrating efficacy of law in 
 our perception of the world.
 
 AGNOSTICISM AND DETERMINISM 113 
 
 Now, this has made a real difference to religion. 
 For formerly religion in many minds found a 
 refuge in parts of the universe which 
 
 1 1 -11 nr> Relig-ion 
 
 were supposed to be outside law. To supposed 
 the primitive savage weather seemed to regions out- 
 be outside law. There, in the matters 
 of rain and hail, was precisely the home of his 
 devotion. Other things were fixed. If you 
 knocked a man on the head hard enough he fell 
 down. There was law about that. You did not 
 say your prayers, but you hit as hard as you 
 could. But the rain was a different affair. There 
 was nothing to be done with regard to that except 
 to drive up cows to the Bushman on the hill. 
 (It is an interesting circumstance in ethnology 
 that races often venerate the scattered remains of 
 the population which they have displaced. So 
 the Hottentots venerate the Bushmen, and the 
 Kaffirs venerate the Hottentots remaining among 
 them.) There, in the weather, was a place for 
 religion, a region outside any law which you could 
 calculate upon ; and, therefore, a region of facts 
 in respect of which you might properly make 
 prayers to God or to those who seemed to know 
 the way of the god of the country. 
 
 In our day and place science, although it does not 
 profess to be able to foretell with great accuracy the 
 particular changes of the weather, would never admit 
 tor a moment that it was outside the range of law. 
 
 I
 
 114 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 At a later stage life seemed to be outside the 
 range of law. We saw a world which was fixed 
 in its physical characteristics of heat and cold and 
 the rest, which we called either the uniformity of 
 nature or the expression, the fixed expression, of 
 God's Will. But we considered the diversities 
 of organic life as if they had a different kind of 
 origin, as if they were made by a different class 
 of fiat, and as if they were the result of a freer 
 choice than the relations which exist, for example, 
 between raising the temperature of a metal and 
 changing its molecular condition, between the 
 heating and the liquefying of lead. 
 
 That region of life also, although it has not 
 been reduced to stateable law and form, will never 
 now be allowed, 1 do not say by scientific persons 
 only, but by any thinking men, to be outside the 
 realm of law. We are sure, though we have not 
 proved it, from the advances that we have made 
 in the study of living substance — In medicine, in 
 physiology, in the observation of the varieties of 
 animal life, and, quite lately, in the further 
 scrutiny of the mysterious changes in the nucleus 
 which precede the segmentation of the cell — that, 
 whatever the law be, and however difficult it may 
 be to find it out and to state it in all its intricacy, 
 there is a law of life quite as binding and quite 
 as uniform in its procedure as the law by which 
 water grows larger when it freezes. We may
 
 AGNOSTICISM AND DETERMINISM 115 
 
 say the same about the origin of species. Though 
 there again the explanation is not yet found, we 
 feel it to be among the things which might be 
 found if we went on far enough along the right 
 track. The developement of man, both in the 
 sense of his descent as a species and in the sense 
 of his individual growth, is a subject from which 
 science does not turn away as being outside its 
 scope. 
 
 And we shall go on claiming more and more 
 things which used to seem outside its range. 
 Mental processes, the movements of the ^j^^ ^^^^^ 
 affections and of the will, all these J°i^°y^^ 
 become the subjects of exact observation further, 
 or of observation which is by way of being exact. 
 Very likely in years to come we shall think our 
 tests were crude and rough or even quite mistaken. 
 Still they are efforts in scientific analysis. And 
 we shall press on until, perhaps, all the move- 
 ments of thought, will, emotion, appear to be 
 either within the range of law or capable of being 
 brought within it. So, then, the various kinds 
 of experiences and the various tracts of the life of 
 the world in which religion of certain kinds has 
 from age to age found a new refuge, as if retreat- 
 ing from the plains into the mountains, are taken 
 from it, if, which I am far from granting, religion 
 requires a refuge which is outside the law of 
 uniformity. And to those who trust to such
 
 ii6 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 remote fastnesses it must appear as if religion 
 would be obliged to pass into the air and ride 
 free of facts altogether. . . . This, then, is what 
 science is doing. It is extending, for the mind, 
 the range and increasing the penetration of law. 
 
 I may mention here, although it does not 
 come strictly in the order I have planned, what 
 A sugges- I think we shall arrive at with regard to 
 tion. Q^j. Q^j^ jjfg^ J think that we shall be 
 
 led to distinguish more clearly than before between 
 all the complex of faculties, even the most inward, 
 in which men energise, and the root of personal 
 being itself. In past ages men did not distinguish 
 between their limbs and their inward centre of 
 identity ; and indeed they were right in an im- 
 portant sense, for one's limbs are not an adjunct 
 or possession ; they are a part of one's self Still, 
 as thought went on, men separated the willing, 
 feeling faculties of themselves which they grouped 
 together as ' soul,' from the outward, muscular 
 effects of the same self. In our own day, these 
 inward movements are in turn claimed by natural 
 science, and we shall make a further step. We shall 
 be obliged to distinguish between all the charac- 
 teristics, all that goes to make up that spiritual 
 vessel in which we make our voyage of life, and — 
 I use for the moment an unsatisfactory expression 
 — the essential passenger himself We shall come 
 to recognize a root of will and choice which lies
 
 AGNOSTICISM AND DETERMINISM 117 
 
 below the complex of motives and the complex 
 of capabilities, which we roughly call our inward 
 being. And it is there, not as in its sole residence, 
 but as if in focus, that we shall distinguish a central 
 force of freedom working outwards, the will, to 
 speak figuratively, springing from that hidden 
 place, to the faculties, and the characteristics, 
 and the motives, and the tendencies themselves 
 which form our inward life ; and, through them, 
 developed in the bodily movements in conduct, 
 in the organization of society, and in the widest 
 range of human influence. At the root, just 
 in proportion as we see the range of law going 
 without exception through the whole series of 
 particulars, so much the more clearly shall we 
 be forced to acknowledge this other reality, the 
 mystery of freedom working in the midst of it. 
 
 With regard to this subject, I will remind you 
 once more of what at an earlier moment we dealt 
 with, namely, the fact that science is an science 
 abstraction, an abstracted operation of jJJ"hVmo(^e 
 the mind; that it must speak under a of necessity, 
 particular mode, and that the mode under which 
 it speaks is the mode of necessity. It must 
 speak of things as if they were necessarily what 
 they are. If they have their form through the 
 freewill of some being, science, nevertheless, must 
 always speak of them in so far as they are deter- 
 mined. Even with regard to the thino^s which
 
 ii8 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 man eiFects, you would have to make this separa- 
 tion of aspects for purposes of study. If you were 
 inquiring, for example, into the action of radium, 
 seeking to know whether or not Professor 
 Crookes's suggestion as to the gathering in of 
 energy from the subtle movements of the air is 
 the true account of its apparently inexhaustible 
 fount of force, you would have to leave out of 
 account the life history of those two persons to 
 whom we owe so much. Monsieur Curie and his 
 wife. That would not come into the particular 
 class of facts regarded. When we were examining 
 these we could not admit to our scientific analysis 
 the fact that Monsieur and Madame Curie might, 
 if they chose, have let the affair alone. The radium 
 is for this particular analysis a fixed datum. For a 
 wider point of view our present knowledge of its 
 behaviour is due to a person's free choice of the 
 manner in which he should employ his life. But 
 the personal questions form no part of the physical 
 inquiry. Even so the world, though it be made 
 by the free action of God, has to be regarded by 
 science as the one and only possible thing which 
 could have been there. Otherwise our particular 
 and abstracted methods of observation would be 
 upset by problems which do not belong to it. 
 Science, therefore, is bound to speak of all things 
 under the mode of necessity, under the notion 
 that they must be what they are.
 
 AGNOSTICISM AND DETERMINISM 119 
 
 With these preliminary remarks we face the 
 difficult problem of necessity, a problem to which 
 I have, no more than anybody else, an answer, 
 but about the practical aspect of which every one 
 has a conviction of his own. 
 
 I leave on one side, I do not approach, that 
 famous employment of the intelligence, the phi- 
 losophical defence of freewill. You may think 
 that from the great thinkers of the world — from 
 Hegel or Lotze — you have a formula which 
 makes it plainer to you, or, at any rate, one which 
 enables you to be perfectly sure, that freev/ill is in 
 the root of things a reality. Or, by contrast, you 
 may think that all philosophical discussions of the 
 matter hitherto have been totally unsatisfactory. 
 But whatever be your view about them, every- 
 body here will admit that freewill is for us an 
 empirical certainty — it is a fact of experience. If 
 it is an illusion, it is a complete illusion to which 
 we are all subject. It is as complete an illusion 
 as the illusion, if it be one, of the uniformity of 
 nature ; and that uniformity is as little susceptible 
 as freewill is of philosophical proof. 
 
 We have, then, to take freedom, along with 
 necessity, as among those things which are true 
 for us in our present experience, what- 
 
 1 • 1 • Freedom is 
 
 ever be the result of the ultimate analysis a fact for 
 
 ^ , . J f. . . experience. 
 
 or that experience. It it is a mystery, 
 
 it is a mystery with which we are certainly
 
 120 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 confronted. If philosophy has been a failure in 
 this respect, then freedom is a mystery, but it is a 
 real mystery. We live in a world which at one 
 moment, or when we are thinking in one way, 
 seems wholly fixed. We live in a world in which 
 day by day we have alternative courses before us, 
 and take which we please. The old statement of 
 Johnson remains true, if at all, only with a difference. 
 He said that all speculation is against freewill, and 
 all experience is in its favour. This will not hold 
 true quite as it stands. All speculation is not 
 against freewill, nor is all experience in its favour. 
 There are many experiences, and many stretches 
 of experience, in which we are inclined to give up 
 the notion of freewill because we find ourselves 
 swept to and fro by irresistible forces. We 
 cannot say that, speculatively, there is nothing to 
 be said for freewill, and, experimentally, nothing 
 to be said against it. Both in speculation and 
 experience we are confronted with these two 
 realities — the reality of necessity and the reality 
 of freewill. 
 
 The second point I wish to make is, that in 
 our experience of freewill there is a certain growth ; 
 
 and that the growth is significant. It 
 seems to is a variation which establishes the fact 
 ^w^^ws that it is not where law is most obscure 
 
 that freewill is most operative. On the 
 contrary, it is precisely where law is most clear
 
 AGNOSTICISM AND DETERMINISM 121 
 
 and where law has been best learned and sub- 
 mitted to and mastered (for, as Bacon said long 
 ago, we only master the world by submitting to 
 it), it is just there that freedom gets its chance. 
 There are two men dealing with the ground. 
 One of them is an untutored savage. He knows 
 nothing about laws of growth. He has not gone 
 behind that old devout and most true statement 
 of the matter which St. Paul gave to the Lycao- 
 nians, when he said that God gives rain from 
 Heaven, and fruitful seasons. This truth, it may 
 be, he dimly discerns, but he has not learned any 
 part of the ordered manner in which the gift 
 arrives. He grubs in the wood for a root ; 
 sometimes he finds it and is glad ; sometimes he 
 misses it, and I will not say that he is sorry, but he 
 is hungry. Occasionally he may plant seed, and 
 it is for him an affair of accident whether it bear 
 fruit or not. He knows nothing — does he ^ — 
 about treating his land with basic slag. He has 
 never worked out the laws — I do not mean abstruse 
 and intricate laws like that of bacterial action 
 upon raw nitrogenous products, the behaviour 
 of those organisms which inhabit the rootlets of 
 leguminous plants, and capture the free nitrogen 
 which would otherwise fly off into space. He 
 does not even know that if you sow wheat it 
 will not come up barley. He thinks of agriculture 
 as a very vague process. The notion of regular
 
 122 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 sequence is not in his mind at all. Sometimes he 
 gets what he wants, and sometimes he goes with- 
 out, and that is all that can be said. Is he the 
 free man, or is the farmer the free man ? 
 
 Surely the farmer who knows the law of the 
 matter, the farmer who regards it as a rigid 
 Example of ^^^chine from whose grip there is no 
 agriculture, escape, he is the man who will get 
 wheat when he wants it, and potatoes when he 
 prefers them. " When he hath made plain the 
 face of his ground," he does not continue in- 
 definitely to plough in a vague manner. " Doth 
 he not cast abroad the fitches and scatter the 
 cummin," and put in the wheat where he wants 
 it to be, " in rows, and the barley in the appointed 
 place, and the spelt in the border " of his field 
 to protect it from the encroachment of animals } 
 " For his God doth instruct him aright and doth 
 teach him." And, further, he knows what to 
 do with his mechanical means. " The fitches 
 are not threshed with a sharp threshing instru- 
 ment." That would not be the way to treat this 
 crop. *' Neither is a cart wheel turned about upon 
 the cummin ; but the fitches are beaten out 
 with a staff, and the cummin " with another suitable 
 instrument. " Bread corn is ground. He will 
 not for ever be threshing it." There is an order 
 in the operations of agriculture. " He doth not 
 break up corn with the wheel of his cart." " This
 
 AGNOSTICISM AND DETERMINISM 123 
 
 also," his agricultural knowledge, " cometh forth 
 from the Lord of Hosts, Which is wonderful in 
 counsel and excellent in wisdom." It is part of 
 His gift, and it discloses something of His own 
 method. Surely that is a plain case. Is it not 
 where the law grows plainer, and precisely for the 
 man to whom it is plain, that freedom and choice 
 become effective ^ 
 
 The same variation is observed in the different 
 parts of our own experience. There are some 
 things of which we know the law, and therein 
 we are free. There are some things about which 
 we do not know the law — such as the weather — 
 and about these we are slaves. 
 
 One can put the two poles of feeling about 
 this matter very well in an image which con- 
 tinually recurs to one who travels about Twoprfmi- 
 the country. There is a time on a rail- JJ-em^eTof 
 way journey when the antic savage thought, 
 wakes up in us again, when the darkness of the 
 tunnel shuts down as you read your book. 
 Have you never known the feeling that it 
 was an incalculable accident ? Have you never 
 known an impatience which was thoroughly 
 unreasonable ? You have tapped your foot, 
 perhaps, until the gloom went up, as if it were 
 something which could be altered. I take it that 
 in that moment when you are impatient, as if the 
 regular recurrence of the dark between this and
 
 124 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 Sevenoaks ^ were something that could be avoided, 
 you are reflecting the ancient savage who does not 
 read law in anything. It is a moment of ancestral 
 sympathy with him. When we think a little we 
 see that the experience belongs to going by train. 
 There is no getting out of it. There are so many 
 tunnels, and they are so long, and they will not 
 come to an end a second sooner for any desire of 
 ours. There we have the old savage idea of 
 freedom, exaggerated and one-sided, corrected by 
 a simple reflexion on the iron rigidity of the 
 system on which we move. 
 
 But, on the other hand, there is the savage, 
 unintelligent belief in necessity. I take another 
 journey ; this time on a motor-car. Suppose it is an 
 old one, perhaps not of the best make, and perhaps 
 not driven in the best way. There is a break- 
 down every twenty miles and a wait of half an 
 hour before each fresh start. The antic savao-e 
 
 o 
 
 spirit in its opposite extreme rises to the asser- 
 tion that all motor travelling has of necessity 
 innumerable breakdowns and they all of them 
 take at least half an hour to get over. There 
 is one savage who thinks you might avoid the 
 dark tunnel through which you are bound 
 to go and for which you have taken a ticket ; 
 and there is another savage who folds his hands 
 
 ' A more speaking example would be the road between Rapallo 
 and Genoa.
 
 AGNOSTICISM AND DETERMINISM 125 
 
 at the innumerable breakdowns which might be 
 avoided by a better mechanician. 
 
 I think that those two simple things throw 
 no contemptible light upon the twofold mystery 
 of necessity and freewill. There are times when 
 we think that things are to be changed which are 
 fixed ; and there are times when we think that 
 things must be fixed which ought to be changed. 
 There is no need for us at the present day to 
 grow in the sense of the inevitable. We have a 
 full enough philosophy of the inevitable already. 
 The proper work of the spirit of man is to extend 
 the range of freedom ; and he will extend it, not 
 by philosophical discussion, but by mastering the 
 very laws in the midst of which he dwells, and 
 by bringing to bear upon them that mysterious 
 fountain of origination which is in himself. 
 
 I think that those brief examples, if thought 
 over, will do one more good with regard to the 
 uniformity of nature than a more learned dis- 
 cussion. At any rate, I will leave the matter 
 there, in order that I may add a word about 
 another freedom which also concerns us, the 
 freedom of God. 
 
 If we are interested in showing that man has 
 in himself a fount of origination, small, relative, 
 confined, and strictly conditioned by the jhe freedom 
 world in which he lives, but yet real; °^^°'^- 
 how much more are we interested in continuino;
 
 126 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 the belief that God is a fountain of unlimited 
 freedom, ruling with sovereign majesty for His 
 own purposes over all that He has created. And 
 surely what we have said about our own freedom 
 within the range of law should carry us to the 
 conclusion a fortiori about God's freedom, Who 
 is Himself holding in the hollow of His hand 
 that universe the laws of which we ipainfuUy and 
 partially observe. Surely if we who are the 
 products of the play of forces can yet, from our 
 nest within the play of forces, make our change 
 in the sequences of the physical events of which 
 we are the children — and this is one of the 
 greatest mysteries of the world, but it is also one 
 of its plainest facts — how much more shall God, 
 Who is not contained in the physical universe, 
 but contains it, control it to His own ends ? 
 How much more shall we continue to believe in 
 His personal freedom of will, although we see 
 uniformity of sequence in the world which He 
 has made } 
 
 My brothers, the uniformity of nature, so far 
 as we have discerned it, is nothing but the ex- 
 pression of the stability of God's good pleasure. 
 The sun rises every morning, and we shall not 
 be warm without it. It is the signal of the sure 
 mercies of God, sure in their recurrence, but 
 merciful in their freedom. . . . The very work 
 of man in this world is to answer to the signal ;
 
 AGNOSTICISM AND DETERMINISM 127 
 
 to know the Father and Jesus Christ Whom He 
 has sent. It is to know the reality of God's 
 controlling power and the clearness of His 
 manifestations within our own flesh, and man 
 ought to grow to know this by what he knows 
 of his own limited self-determination. He ought 
 to look up with joy and reverence to God and 
 adore in Him a great reality, which answers to 
 that small but real spark of freedom which He 
 has planted in us, and which makes the possibility 
 of virtue and of honour. 
 
 But instead of this, forgetting our own limita- 
 tion, or rather in the very name of our own 
 limitation judging the Almighty, we deny His 
 freedom because of the constancy of His gitts. 
 It is very strange — is it not ? — that the naturalistic 
 analysis, which goes to show that the knowledge 
 of men and their mental processes are totally 
 insignificant and hardly respectable, being, indeed, 
 if this interpretation stands, nothing but the in- 
 evitable reaction of quasi-chemical changes, should 
 rely upon these very processes which are shown 
 to be so mean for a title to judge of the great 
 reality which lies behind all that encloses us. 
 
 You remember the old image of the mice in 
 the piano. You must distinguish it from ward's 
 another story, very valuable, about the J^cffn^the ^ 
 beetles in the clock. It is an image in- P'^°- 
 vented by Dr. W. G. Ward, not the Ward whose
 
 128 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 book, Agnosticism and Naturalism^ you ought all 
 to be reading now, but another Ward, " Ideal " 
 Ward, one of the men of the Oxford Movement. 
 The image is this, and it is one which carries 
 something like conviction with it to my mind. 
 Dr. Ward pictures a nation of mice living within 
 a piano, which is their world, beyond which they 
 do not pass. The possibility of a supply of food 
 must be imagined. They live within their world 
 of wood and wires. There they are born, and 
 there they grow up. Over their heads continually 
 is music, and they perceive something, though 
 but a little, of its mechanism. You have to 
 suppose them endowed with reasoning faculties 
 not inferior to our own. Now, such mice, says 
 Dr. W^ard, observing the sequence of sounds over 
 their heads, enjoying, one may suppose, the 
 music, would at first think that all was ' free ' in 
 the savage sense, all incalculable. But as genera- 
 tions went on they would begin to observe the 
 sequences. And then, further, some would arise 
 who observed the fall of the hammers upon the 
 wires and they would say — and it is not an 
 exaggeration of what is said by ourselves — "This 
 music which you take to be a token of a person- 
 ality like our own is but the result of the impact 
 of the hammers upon the wires, which could only 
 come to pass after this antecedent and that." 
 One can imagine something like a parallel of
 
 AGNOSTICISM AND DETERMINISM 129 
 
 some statements of Tyndall. " You can no more 
 expect the tune without the fall of the hammers 
 than you can expect to see the mouse walk upon 
 the ceiling of the piano." Here arises rationalism 
 in the mouse mind. Then, further, there appear 
 in this generation of scientific mice one or two 
 explorers bolder and more persevering than the 
 rest. At last one who has gone up above the 
 hammers and above the wires, who has explored 
 through several joints the system of levers, returns 
 to announce that what appeared to be the incalcu- 
 lable fall of the hammers upon the wires is itself 
 strictly determined by processes which he is quite 
 sure are ultimate and final, the movement of 
 certain rods behind the scene. Under this teach- 
 ing, under this disheartening gospel, the poor mice 
 lose all trust in anything beyond their universe. 
 The rigorous logic of experience is too strong 
 for them. They see, too plainly to deny it, the 
 sequence between sound and hammer and the 
 movement of the rods behind ; and if there are 
 some things which they cannot follow, they are 
 willing to fall down before the authority of the 
 mouse who knows. . . . And all the while outside 
 there is some one who ordains the tune, who 
 creates the music, who pours into this machine, 
 through all its intricacy, the reality of a spiritual 
 life, so that beings of a higher order, not living 
 inside the piano, but seated round it, not only 
 
 K
 
 130 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 admire the working of art brought out by a skill 
 which they know to be personal, but are also 
 touched by a spiritual message which finds an 
 echo in their own hearts. 
 
 Even so, while we, observing the few joints 
 in the machinery which we have been able to trace, 
 Determinism ^hink fit to assert dogmatically that the 
 fromTimfted world, in which necessity plainly rules, 
 experience, ^nd in which One thing is determined 
 by its antecedent, can have no reality of 
 freedom behind it, we are like the mice within 
 the piano, and prate our disbelief in the unseen 
 presence of other beings of a higher scale ; nay, 
 in the presence of the humblest village wife who 
 is a believing Christian, and who by her belief has 
 escaped from this shell of carnal and physical 
 experience to a direct intuition of the great Artist, 
 of the real Freedom, of the sovereign Will and 
 Love which lie behind the regulated world we 
 see.
 
 VI 
 
 NATURAL SELECTION AND THEISM : 
 THE SUBJECT RESUMED^ 
 
 The spectacle of life — Recapitulation — Different views of Natural 
 Selection — For our purpose the greatest possible force allowed 
 to Natural Selection — What is Natural Selection ? — -Selection 
 does not account for Life — The wonder of life is in the whole 
 of it — A dilemma — Natural Selection does not account for 
 variation. 
 
 "Then were the entrances of this world made narrow, and sorrowful 
 and toilsome : they are but few and evil, full of perils, and charged with 
 great toils." — 2 Esdras vii. 12 (R.V.), 
 
 The five Addresses delivered in Lent may, I 
 hope, have been useful in establishing some degree 
 of acquaintance, though it be of a one- -j-he spectacle 
 sided sort, between the speaker and °^^^^^- 
 those who are so patient as to listen. I am 
 still seeking guidance as to the subjects which 
 interest my hearers. Some letters have reached 
 me, and these indicate what is to me a specially 
 welcome fact, viz. that minds are movincr 
 
 ' CD 
 
 1 Between the two addresses which are given in Chapters V. 
 and VI. there was an interval of many weeks.
 
 132 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 away from particular biological or physical dis- 
 cussions to the wider problems of metaphysics 
 and of faith. It is pessimism which is felt to be 
 the main danger by believers ; and to others it is 
 precisely the doctrine of evil and of sin, the 
 general form of our Theodike, which seems most 
 difficult and most worthy of examination in our 
 Christian belief. Both the tendency to a wider 
 speculation and the wider questions themselves 
 are alike most welcome to me ; but at present and 
 for the purpose of this particular course it seems a 
 duty to keep as near as we can to questions which 
 are usually, if roughly, called scientific. Perhaps 
 when we have paid in this way some very small 
 instalment of our debt to the narrower subjects, 
 we may find opportunity to work together upon 
 deeper questions of life. 
 
 To-day I return to Natural Selection and its 
 supposed conflict with Theism ; and with regard 
 Recapituia- ^o this conflict 1 will recall certain points 
 tion. |.Q your memory. First, in physical 
 
 inquiry we distinguish Evolution — the general 
 doctrine of the specialization of living creatures 
 by descent with modification — from Natural 
 Selection, which is the supposed guide or directive 
 factor of evolution. Perhaps we ought not to 
 speak of the theory of Natural Selection, for a 
 theory should in some particular respect cover 
 the whole of the facts under examination. Thus,
 
 NATURAL SELECTION AND THEISM 133 
 
 Young's undulatory theory of light is an interpre- 
 tation, for certain purposes and to a certain degree, 
 of the whole of the phenomena of light, so far as 
 they were known to Young. 
 
 The Doctrine of Natural Selection is not in a 
 similar position. For Natural Selection was not 
 held by Darwin to be a fact operating over 
 the whole field of evolution, but to be a factor, a 
 working influence mingled with, or alternating 
 with, other influences. Let us, then, call the facts 
 pointed to under this name the selective elements 
 in evolution, and let us call the doctrine of those 
 facts the Principle of Natural Selection in the 
 Evolution Theory. We distinguish, then, first, 
 the general doctrine, or T^heory^ of Evolution from 
 the special Principle of Natural Selection, which 
 was Darwin's original contribution to that theory 
 — a contribution, you will remember, which was 
 independently ofi^ered by Wallace at the same 
 time. 
 
 We made also a distinction with rep-ard to the 
 matter of faith in question ; a distinction between 
 Theism, or the general belief in God, and Bible 
 or Church Doctrine. It is perhaps almost the 
 same distinction as that between natural and 
 revealed religion. Taking this distinction, I 
 ventured to suggest — I do not profess to have 
 proved the point — that the general doctrine of 
 evolution does not come into conflict with Theism
 
 134 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 as such, though it may be thought, and indeed it 
 has been thought, to be in conflict with Chris- 
 tianity. But the principle of Natural Selection 
 may indeed seem to be in conflict with Theism 
 because it seems to provide a method for the 
 guidance of evolution which may be substituted 
 for the directing power of God. It seems to 
 some minds to complete a mechanical theory of 
 the origination of the universe, because as, 1 
 think, Professor Karl Pearson says, it brings life 
 within the range of a mechanical theory which, 
 before Darwin, had to allow an exception in the 
 case of life. Here we are plainly face to face with 
 a number of opportunities for debate which 1 
 must only most briefly indicate, grouping them 
 under two principal heads. 
 
 In the first place it may be questioned — and 
 the question will range in various directions — 
 whether the doctrine of Natural Selection does 
 really thus complete a mechanical theory of the 
 universe ; and in the second place we may ask — 
 and here, again, is a wide inquiry — whether a 
 completed mechanical theory of the universe is 
 in any true respect hostile to a rational Theism. 
 But I pass from these questions, which plainly 
 require very patient treatment, to indicate some 
 further necessary distinctions in the scientific 
 doctrine of Natural Selection itself. 
 
 On the scientific side of the matter the
 
 NATURAL SELECTION AND THEISM 135 
 
 following positions may be distinguished if we 
 are to get anything like a full account of 
 Natural Selection. Some, like Darwin Different 
 himself, consider that this influence is Nlui^rai ■ 
 one part — and the most important part Selection. 
 — of the machinery by which specific differences, 
 without distinguishing them from adaptations, in 
 organic life have been reached. 
 
 Secondly. Others, like Weismann, hold that, 
 granted certain data, Natural Selection alone is 
 sufficient to account for the organic scene, that it 
 may be made to cover all differences of living 
 beings that exist. 
 
 Thirdly. These latter naturalists are in turn 
 criticized by writers of whom for a time, and for 
 the purpose of securing fuller discussion, Romanes 
 made himself the leader, and who contend that 
 the Doctrine of Selection is only an account of the 
 origin of adaptations^ and does not cover the whole 
 range of specific differences. To identify this 
 position with that of Darwin would be to beg the 
 question in debate between them and such writers 
 as Weismann and Lankester. It would also be to 
 deny any special value to the distinction drawn 
 between character and adaptation. 
 
 Fourthly. There are those who consider 
 either that the secret causes of variation and the 
 directive force of the environment account for the 
 animal forms we see, or who are on other grounds
 
 136 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 inclined to consider that the importance of 
 Darwin's principle has been very much over- 
 estimated. Of these, perhaps the most important 
 is Eimer, but he was preceded by several impor- 
 tant American naturalists, among whom Cope is 
 perhaps the best known. I have mentioned these 
 points with a definite purpose, although it is 
 not the purpose of examining the merits of the 
 different views. Such a work would be out of 
 place here, and I am anxious to make one point 
 alone, namely, that we are not as Christians, that 
 we are not as Theists, interested in the disparage- 
 ment, or in the refutation, or in the retrenching of 
 the doctrine of Darwinism. The question of the 
 nature of evolution is far more complicated than 
 it was in Darwin's time. We are more and more 
 fully aware how small a part of the facts is at 
 present within our reach, and the very advance of 
 knowledge with regard to the accumulation of 
 adaptations only shows us more clearly the great 
 fact of variation, the more general facts of heredity 
 itself, lying before us for an investigation which 
 has hardly begun. In fact, those who most con- 
 fidently accept the Darwinian principle as sound are, 
 most of all men, obliged to acknowledge the large- 
 ness and the importance of the unexplained facts 
 which constitute the necessary postulates of the 
 system. For the purposes of a theological inquiry 
 it is best, and indeed, when we are to consider the
 
 NATURAL SELECTION AND THEISM 137 
 
 relations between Natural Selection and Theism, it 
 is the only possible course, to take the most favour- 
 able view of the certainty of Natural For our pur- 
 Selection and to give it in our minds |reatest 
 the widest range which has ever been fonfe*^'^ 
 claimed for it. If there is in it something nSSi ^° 
 inconsistent with rational Theism, we Selection, 
 should not, as Theists, be better off if we could 
 drive this something into a corner, if we could 
 show that it operated only within a narrow range ; 
 for a principle which is in its own nature incon- 
 sistent with belief in God is entirely destructive 
 of our position, even if it emerges only quite 
 exceptionally in the course of a long range of 
 facts. Let us, therefore, grant it provisionally the 
 widest conceivable range. Let us suppose, as 1 
 for my part wish that on scientific grounds we 
 could securely suppose, that to discover the origin 
 of adaptations would be to discover the origin of 
 species ; that all adaptations may be shown to have 
 survived and been accumulated by means of the 
 elimination of the unfit ; that in this way the 
 whole vast aggregate of organic forms, both plants 
 and animals, and not excluding man, could be set 
 theoretically in a series, so as to demonstrate the 
 origin of each from some primitive and simple 
 and undifferentiated form through chains of 
 intermediate species. Suppose, that is to say, that 
 the boldest aspiration of a system of evolutionary
 
 138 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 biology were completely fulfilled, and fulfilled in 
 
 such a way as to show that the directing force 
 
 throughout had been that which is generalized 
 
 under the term of " the survival of the fittest," or 
 
 Natural Selection. But at this point, and before 
 
 I take my next step, I must in some brief way 
 
 illustrate the supposed nature of that process, and 
 
 here is a task of the utmost difficulty, only 
 
 increased by long familiarity with the idea to be 
 
 expressed, a familiarity, no doubt, shared by many 
 
 in this place. 
 
 What, in roughest outline, is the description 
 
 of this supposed process .? Perhaps we get at 
 
 the matter best in the way along which 
 What is . "^ ° . 
 
 Natural Darwin was actually led towards his 
 
 Selection ? , , , ... r 1 
 
 theory, by the consideration or the 
 facts of variation under the culture of man. 
 
 We know that many varieties exist in each 
 kind of domestic animals and of domestic plants ; 
 and that it is often alleged, and in some cases 
 proved, that these varieties are in the case of each 
 kind descended from a common and undifferen- 
 tiated stock. How, Darwin asked himself, are the 
 varieties established ? Not, he thought — this 
 description is a little one-sided — by direct in- 
 fluences being brought to bear upon the plant 
 which it was desired to improve, but by taking 
 advantage of a certain inherent quality in the 
 unimproved stock. The plant or the pigeon —
 
 NATURAL SELECTION AND THEISM 139 
 
 and the matter is the same in either case — gives 
 rise to a number of individuals like itself in the 
 most important respects, but varying in respect of 
 details — varying in size, in shade of colour, and 
 in a multitude of other characters. The gardener 
 or the fancier effects his improvements not by any 
 direct influence upon these variations, but by 
 selecting among them that which he prefers, by 
 continually destroying all those which fall below 
 a certain standard with respect to the feature 
 which he desires to obtain. By keeping, to take 
 a rough example, among his pigeons all those 
 which show a large supply of white feathers, 
 he eventually ' produces ' a race of birds which 
 is immensely different in aspect from that with 
 which he started. His new specialized type has 
 been obtained by a selective process of elimination 
 carried on in the treatment of the highly varied 
 offspring of his generalized type. Just such a 
 process, Darwin conceived, we may trace in 
 Nature itself. The fancier ' selects ' his whitish 
 pigeon by the destruction of the others, and so 
 at last gets out his pure white stock. Even so 
 Nature, by the pressure of necessity, by the race 
 for food, by the difficulties of escape, by the 
 decimations of flood and winter, may be said to 
 select among the infinitely graduated variations of 
 an unspecializcd stock this or that specific point 
 for preservation ; this or that species to fit a
 
 I40 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 particular niche in the competitive world of 
 animal life ; this or that hardier wheat in the 
 struggle of excessive vegetation. . . . But it is 
 not our duty to-day to describe this famous 
 doctrine. I must refer you to the great books 
 which are devoted to its discussion, for no brief 
 indication of it is satisfactory. Nevertheless, what 
 I have said is fair, so far as it goes ; it is fair 
 because it is friendly ; and enough has been said 
 to indicate the general line of a doctrine which 
 has met on the side of science with a perpetually 
 increased delicacy of criticism, and which un- 
 doubtedly must go through many modifications, 
 a long struggle for survival on its own part, before 
 it reaches anything like a final and fixed form. 
 I believe, however, that I have not left out of 
 my description of it any quite vitally necessary 
 element. It is a doctrine of the accumulation of 
 variations through and by a sifting process of 
 advantage and disadvantage in the perpetual race 
 for life. It has for its root the notion and the 
 fact of the excess multiplication of plants and 
 animals, the notion and the fact that in the 
 struggle to survive a result is produced which 
 resembles the effect of a definite and purposeful 
 choice. Whether or no such a doctrine as this 
 is incompatible with the idea of God it is not 
 now in place to say. I find it most diflficult to 
 catch, for my own part, any signs of such an
 
 NATURAL SELECTION AND THEISM 141 
 
 opposition, and Darwin himself, in one of the 
 newly published letters, speaks in his almost 
 always gentle and humble way in deprecation of 
 any idea such as might be called the Deification 
 of Natural Selection.^ His vision, he says, of a 
 purely mechanical process surely does not exclude 
 the general laws of the universe under which 
 alone any such play of competition could produce 
 the particular effect which is actually produced.^ 
 For our present purpose I will indicate only two 
 points with regard to this doctrine taken, as I 
 have repeatedly said, at its largest and freest. 
 
 First, it was never offered as a theory to ac- 
 count for the fact of life. It does not account, 
 as Darwin himself urged, either for the origin of 
 life, or for the origin of its character Selection 
 and behaviour. It assumes life as its account for 
 necessary basis ; it is on the known 
 facts of life that it rests its claim to be pro- 
 bable. Nothing in it has the smallest tendency, 
 when rightly considered, to bridge the gulf, the 
 great gulf, between life and no-life. Let me, 
 before I further illustrate this point, interject the 
 remark that I should not for my own part be 
 content with any support of the Theistic position 
 which was drawn from life alone in such a way as 
 to suggest that in life we had evidence which is 
 
 1 Ne^-w Letters of Charles Darivin, vol. i. p. 154 (til. 1903). 
 * See on this point Baldwin's Denjelopment ami Frvolutioti , p. 232 
 (ed, 1902).
 
 142 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 absent from the things without life. Nor, again, 
 could I rest content with a theology which might 
 be shaken by the discovery of some bridge of 
 natural process linking the phenomena of crystal- 
 growth to the phenomena of living substances. 
 What it is, how much and how little, that such 
 links effect for the explanation of the facts which 
 they connect is a question hardly lying within the 
 range either of Physics or Biology, and It is one 
 which cannot now be discussed. But for those 
 whose minds are disturbed by the suggestion that 
 life has been in some sense explained by the 
 principle of Natural Selection it is in point to 
 say, as I have already said, that nothing in the 
 Selectionist description of the behaviour of life 
 accounts, or is entitled to account. In the slightest 
 degree, for the existence of life itself ; nor does it, 
 as I have said, tend to bridge the gap, or even to 
 narrow the gulf, that lies between life and all that 
 Is not life.^ 
 
 Here we have to deal with a special source 
 of confusion in thought. Men have traced lines 
 of descent more or less successfully towards their 
 source. They point to a very simple, highly 
 unspeclalized form of living substance as the 
 
 ' From the point of view ot a philosopher, the problcMii of the 
 appearance of life itself is a special instance of the problem ot the 
 origin of variety or heterogeneity in general. But the Biological in- 
 vestigation of the origin of species presupposes living matter, and at 
 first presupposed also the existence of variations.
 
 NATURAL SELECTION AND THEISM 143 
 
 common origin of all the animals and plants we 
 see, and the question arises whether those who 
 have travelled so far may not hope to take one 
 more step ? Surely if we can pass from the ele- 
 phant to the protozoon, or, more boldly yet, from 
 man and all that he is and does, to the unicellular 
 organism, which is, after all, morphologically 
 comparable to one of the cells which together 
 constitute man's body, — surely after such a 
 journey we may have courage, and we may hope 
 for one more step, the step from the living jelly, 
 which is so like a drop of oil, to the inorganic com- 
 pound which, under certain conditions, so closely 
 simulates the movements of the living jelly. 
 
 Now, here is a fallacy, which I wish I could 
 disentangle. The thought which I have tried to 
 describe contains in it the notion that we have 
 somehow got away from the nearer links in 
 reaching the more remote, that we have passed 
 from the man or the horse to the moneron in 
 such a way as to have wiped out the high and 
 greatly specialized forms behind our backs. But 
 this is a mere figure of speech. We have only 
 arrived at the moneron, we have only traced our 
 path back or down to it, by means of the facts 
 which lie along the whole range of organized life ; 
 and we carry along with us in our thought the whole 
 of that life. That is to say, in climbing down we 
 have not rid ourselves of the need of the highest
 
 144 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 links of the chain down which we climb. We 
 are attempting a piece of injustice, which is a 
 kind of inversion of that which is known as kick- 
 ing away the ladder by which we climb. Here 
 we try to kick away the ladder by which we 
 descended, and we speak of the leap at the bottom 
 as small in such a way as to forget that it would 
 not have been small, but destructively deep, if it 
 were not for all the links which lie above our head 
 and which still form an absolutely inseparable part 
 of the facts upon which alone we can proceed. Or, 
 changing the figure, make it no ladder, but a rope, 
 and our very sensations will warn us of the peril 
 of losing its uppermost strands ; will tell us that it 
 is not the end of rope between our hands, but the 
 long line of rope by which it is attached to the 
 solid beam, on which, at every point, and all along, 
 we depend. 
 
 So if there existed, as no naturalist will say 
 there does exist, a thinker so acute and so suc- 
 cessful that he had traced his path all the way 
 by secure steps down from the varied scene of 
 mammalian existence to the formless but still 
 living reality of the cell-like protozoon, he 
 would not really have reduced the gulf to an 
 easy leaping-space between non-life and lowest 
 life, for he carries along with him in his very 
 knowledge of the characteristics of protoplasm 
 all the facts that go to the full description of
 
 NATURAL SELECTION AND THEISM 145 
 
 the entire varied scene of organic life. Or if 
 you choose to put it otherwise, if indeed his 
 process has been a process of reduction, so that 
 he need only regard the quotient which he has 
 arrived at, and not the great sum upon which he 
 has operated with his divisors, yet even if this be 
 granted, his resultant simplicity, his last term is 
 shown by the very nature of such an argument to 
 contain, in Tyndal's phrase, " the promise and the 
 potency " of all the rest. 
 
 I take the risk which belongs to repetition in 
 order to secure clearness for this point. By every 
 new attempt at analysis, I repeat, organic -j-he wonder 
 life is made to disclose more grounds the^^hoi" 
 for wonder than before. It must be °^ '^• 
 steadily contemplated as a whole, and nothing which 
 has been proved, nothing which has been ^sug- 
 gested, about its humble and simple origin, ought 
 to hide from us the challenge which is constituted 
 by that whole. This simple original form, this 
 humble ancestor, is thought to be represented in 
 the actual organic population by certain unicellu- 
 lar forms. These are, if I may so express the 
 matter, the unprogressive, old-fashioned cousins 
 living as the first ancestors lived, but in the 
 society of other descendants of that ancestor who 
 have departed very far and in many different 
 directions from the primitive simplicity. 
 
 Now, this contemporary simple form, and this 
 
 L
 
 146 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 supposed ancestor of us all, have alike caused un- 
 reasonable disturbance in our minds. Something 
 like the same disturbance, a touch of fear and 
 shame, exists when, in the scale of merely social or 
 conventional developement, a lowly forefather is 
 found for a distinguished house. This powerful 
 ruler, this gallant gentleman, this dame the flower 
 of our refinement, are descended, and at no long 
 remove, from a mechanic, a countryman, a poor 
 lad of the romantic half-crown. The answer 
 surely springs for recognition and use. What a 
 wonderful lad, then, what a wonderful peasant, 
 what a blacksmith or wheelwright was this ! 
 Simple as he stood a century or so ago among 
 his comrades, he was, as Buonaparte said of 
 himself, already an ancestor — ancestor of such 
 gracious ladies, such noble knights. We have 
 certainly no need to be ashamed of him, the 
 founder of the house. We point for proof of his 
 quality to the house he has founded. 
 
 About the lowly ancestors of living forms at 
 large, my answer would run on somewhat the 
 same lines. With regard to this humblest form — 
 and he is immeasurably below the vertebrates, or 
 that perhaps degenerate vertebrate the Ascidian, 
 once called " ancestor of man " — with regard to this 
 earliest living thing, we are in a dilemma, a happy 
 dilemma, shutting us up on either hand to a 
 hopeful conclusion.
 
 NATURAL SELECTION AND THEISM 147 
 
 Grant, first — and it is a bold concession — that 
 the relation between the lowest protozoon and the 
 mammal is a relation of time ; that the one 
 represents an earlier form than the other ; that 
 there has been in short a succession of forms on 
 the earth, a succession such that the earlier linger 
 on with the later arrivals. 
 
 Grant, further, that the succession is wholly 
 one of descent ; that the various forms are related 
 to one another in kinship. 
 
 Then follows our dilemma. Either the pro- 
 gressive differentiation of the later, younger, more 
 complicated forms has been wholly due 
 
 ^ ^, • • 1 ^• /-I A dilemma. 
 
 to the ongmal quality or the proto- 
 zoon (of course, under the various stimulations 
 and opportunities of the environment), or it has 
 not. If it has not, then additional forces of life, 
 forces of vigour, and forces to shape and qualify, 
 have been introduced into the series of descent 
 from outside the series. From whence .'' From 
 whatever source they have come, to suppose them 
 is to say very precisely that the variety of the 
 organic population is not due to mere descent, 
 accompanied by mechanical modification in corre- 
 spondence with the environment ; that another 
 force has been at work ; that the primitive form 
 is not in any true sense an ancestor, but only the 
 leading member of a file ; finally, that in reaching 
 by inquiry that simplest form we have not at all
 
 148 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 narrowed the description or lessened the wonder 
 of life, for besides the slender thread we trace to 
 that small beginning, there have been all along 
 other powers introduced which elude our dis- 
 covery, which command our wonder. 
 
 What is the other horn of the dilemma ? If 
 the descent has been indeed a descent, if no 
 forces have been at work except such as were 
 present in the earliest form, and required only the 
 environment for their developement, then mark 
 what follows. It follows that, instead of taking 
 the undifferentiated jelly as explanation of the 
 flocks and herds, of man with his society and 
 the creations of his art, we have to take these 
 as the explanation, as the large and manifested 
 description, of the hidden potencies of the jelly. 
 
 In either case, we have not narrowed the 
 stream, we have not lessened the bulk. We have 
 not found the answer to the mystery of life, we 
 have only read out more at length the great 
 question that it is ; read it so as to catch some 
 of its first trembling whispers, but not so as to 
 escape from its more immense and challenging 
 notes. 
 
 Your stately civilization, your art, your 
 prayer, says the Naturalist-Agnostic, these are no 
 spiritual creation. They are but the last result 
 of nervous reflexes which exist in essence in the 
 simplest monad. Your life is nothing greater
 
 NATURAL SELECTION AND THEISM 149 
 
 than a speck of jelly opened out. And we reply : 
 your jelly is nothing less than human society 
 folded up. 
 
 That is our reply, on his own terms. We 
 do not commit ourselves to his premiss, an 
 unproved premiss, that it is only the unfolding of 
 the jelly that goes to the result. But for one 
 who rests on that premiss there is no escape from 
 the wonder which is due to such a jelly. It is 
 the whole scene of organic life, it is the whole 
 range of life including man and all he may be, 
 which in any case and on any showing constitutes 
 the great question which we meet. There is life 
 before you. What do you think of it ? Do not 
 answer by the cry, " See how small its smallest 
 part is, and the whole is in the part." 
 
 It is, after all, then, with the whole range of 
 life that we have to deal ; and however interest- 
 ing, however intensely valuable would be such a 
 reduction as we have not yet seen, it would leave 
 us as before, face to face with life as a great 
 positive fact, with life in all its possibilities of 
 variation — to deal with, to account for, do I say ? 
 Nay, to admire and to reverence, as the authentic 
 manifestation of a creative mind. 
 
 But, secondly, not only does the Selection 
 theory decline to account for the fact of life, 
 requiring rather the deepest recognition of the 
 fact ; it does not even propose to accoimt for
 
 150 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 one special feature of living substance, namely, 
 
 its tendency to variation. Here, at any rate, we 
 
 are not face to face with something with 
 
 Natural ... , , . , , 
 
 Selection which Only metaphysics or theology can 
 account for deal. We are confronted by something 
 
 variation. i*i* u-^.r* ■l'i*i 
 
 which IS a proper subject ror biological 
 inquiry, and begins now to receive that inquiry 
 in something like sufficient measure. I have 
 pronounced once and again the name, perhaps 
 some day to be so distinguished, of the Abbot, 
 or more properly the Prelate, Mendel, made 
 known in England by Mr. Bateson.^ 
 
 If you know anything of Mendel's apparently 
 most fruitful suggestions, you know he is dealing 
 with a range of biological facts which Darwin was 
 fain to take unexplained as the given postulate of his 
 theory. Darwin assumed the infinite variation of 
 living creatures. Some have challenged the very 
 fact. Bateson has done a great deal to show that a 
 continuous and minute variation does not prevail.'^ 
 But be that as it may. The variation may be con- 
 tinuous and minute, or it may be, on the contrary, 
 large and spasmodic, and proceed per saltum. In 
 either case it remains a fact requiring its own 
 
 > MendeVs Principles of Heredity, by W. Bateson. Cambridge 
 University Press, 1902. 
 
 * At any rate, he shows the existence of many cases of discon- 
 tinuous variation. It may be convenient to add that the existence 
 of Natural Selection does not depend upon the existence of con- 
 tinuous and minute variation.
 
 NATURAL SELECTION AND THEISM 151 
 
 biological explanation ; and that explanation 
 certainly cannot be derived from Natural Selec- 
 tion itself. For this seems to require for its 
 application the existence of an infinite, or almost 
 infinite, capacity and tendency to vary ; and this is 
 true, whether the actual variations are minute and 
 continuous or occasional and large. 
 
 So far, our time this afternoon permits us 
 to follow this subject, which has engaged some 
 of the most acute thinkers for a large number 
 of years, and will continue to engage the energy of 
 many more. It is obvious that we can only touch 
 it here. 1 hope that, only touching it, we have 
 yet touched it to some effect. I hope that under 
 the conditions here of necessity imposed upon us, I 
 have done something of what can be done to show 
 that on biological grounds alone — for it was my 
 second point — Natural Selection is not an explana- 
 tion of so much as the procedure of organic life ; 
 that it describes a process within a certain range 
 by which variations, the origin of which is not by 
 it accounted for, may have been accumulated. And 
 besides, I hope that in my first point 1 was able to 
 suggest that, supposing what of course, in fact, 
 has not taken place, namely, that the process of 
 explanation had gone to its utmost possible 
 stretch, and that the entire scene of organic life 
 could be arranged, for thought, in a series leading 
 back and down to the simplest and most generalized
 
 152 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 form of living matter, we should not thereby 
 have made a step towards accounting for, still less 
 towards eliminating, the wonder of organic life. 
 We should only have shown that great positive 
 fact as more intricately admirable than we had 
 before suspected. We should see, indeed, the 
 reign of law traceable to some degree within a 
 region which was anciently thought to be outside 
 it, but we should not thereby have been forced to 
 take one step in the abandonment of that rever- 
 ence for supreme creative power which finds its 
 evidence partly in the outward scene, though it 
 has, as I shall always hold, its primary supports 
 in that interior consciousness of likeness to and 
 of union with God which forms the centre and 
 burning focus of man's self-recognition.
 
 VII 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 
 
 Recapitulation — A plausible case for opposition between Bible and 
 Evolution — The opposition roughly stated — More than one 
 kind of question is involved — We do not really judge the Bible 
 from outside — Genesis should be compared not with modern 
 biology, but with other ancient cosmogonies — The mythology 
 of Teutonic races — The philosophy of Greece — Scepticism or 
 Dualism — First leading thought of Genesis : Creation — The 
 word translated * Create ' — A second leading thought of 
 Genesis : Change — A third point : the unity of living with 
 inanimate nature — Fourth point : the unity of man with 
 nature — The presence in man of an element beyond nature — 
 Does Science forbid the statement that man is complex ? — No 
 revolution in thought has taken place — Recapitulation — The 
 Bible gives truth in a form credible through many ages. 
 
 "And the Lord said unto me, In the beginning, when the earth was 
 made, before the outgoings of the world were fixed, or ever the gatherings 
 of the winds blew, before the voices of the thunder sounded, and before the 
 flashes of the lightning shone, or ever the foundations of paradise were laid, 
 before the fair flowers were seen, . . . and or ever the imaginations of 
 them that now sin were estranged . . . then did I consider these things, 
 and they were all made through me alone, and through none other." — 
 2 EsDRAS vi. 1-6 (R.V.). 
 
 In earlier addresses an effort was made to dis- 
 tinguish two different pairs of supposed incom- 
 patible terms in thought. In each case j^^^^ ^^.^j 
 we desire to show that the contrasted *'°"- 
 terms are not really incompatible with one
 
 154 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 another. But as a preliminary, it is important 
 to make each pair stand clear of the other, so 
 that the supposed conflict may be definite and 
 apparently serious. 
 
 In the part of scientific doctrine which we are 
 considering we distinguish between the conception 
 of Evolution in general and that of Natural 
 Selection in particular. In religious doctrine we 
 distinguish between Theism (or natural religion) 
 in general and Christian belief in particular ; or, 
 to give the matter what may appear at first sight 
 a wider scope, between Theism and Bible Doctrine. 
 
 It is no part of our present business to ask 
 whether for us there can be a Bible Doctrine 
 which is not Christian, and how far we are 
 bound, as Christians, to certain views of the 
 nature of the Bible and of its contents. It is 
 enough to point in general terms to the fact 
 that to defend Theism in the abstract is not 
 sufficiently to defend Christianity, or to relieve the 
 believers in the Bible of the charge of neglecting 
 or affronting the teachings of science. 
 
 Further, we paired our opposites in this 
 manner. We said that with abstract Theism it 
 was difficult to bring Evolution as such into 
 collision, if Evolution is stated in general terms 
 and without definition of its mode of action. 
 With Theism Natural Selection must be paired as 
 a possible opponent, since it describes a mode of
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 155 
 
 Evolution which may conceivably, or at least in 
 argument, be set in contrast with the Theistic 
 conception of the world's nature and origin. 
 
 But with Bible doctrine it is still possible that 
 even Evolution in general is in conflict. For 
 evidently it is one thing to show that belief in 
 God in general escapes a certain opposition, and 
 a different thing to show that a particular doctrine 
 of God which (on the whole and in variously 
 growing clearness) is displayed in the books of 
 the Bible is free (at any rate in the same degree) 
 from the same opposition. 
 
 A particular doctrine of Evolution might be 
 in conflict with the most general and the most 
 generous Theism. A particular doctrine about 
 God may be in conflict with the most general and 
 most generous scheme of Evolution. 
 
 Under the title, therefore, of the present 
 lecture, we are to raise this question of the com- 
 patibility of the Bible and Evolution. 
 
 Now, when we come to the Bible, to revealed 
 religion, to positive theology, it may be admitted 
 that there is prima facie an opposition a plausible 
 between some of our sources of doctrine opposiUon 
 and some of the lessons of science. eSk^fnci 
 And for an example of such an opposi- Evolution, 
 tion primd facie I take one which has been 
 very generally made the subject of considera- 
 tion ; the contrast between the teaching of Genesis
 
 156 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 and the teaching of natural history with regard to 
 the past of the planet we live in and of its living 
 inhabitants. Here, those who have given up 
 hope of war upon other grounds take heart once 
 more, and expect relief from the weariness of 
 peace. Here, it is urged, the contradiction of the 
 two teachings is too glaring to be managed or 
 disguised. 
 
 The doctrine of the Bible and the Church (we 
 are asked to admit) is that at a particular point of 
 ^^ time God made the world : that He 
 
 The opposi- 
 tion roughly peopled it in a few days with various 
 stated. . 
 
 forms of life, and finally made man 
 separately in His image ; nor is there much to 
 quarrel with in such a statement of our faith. 
 But science, on the other hand, it is urged, shows 
 that the earth is the result of long developement, 
 and that all the forms of life have appeared 
 according to natural laws, that they have arisen 
 in succession from some generalized forms of 
 existence by the operation of forces not different 
 from those which we see in action in the world 
 to-day. 
 
 Is it not in the contrast between continuous 
 succession and abrupt change that we find 
 by far the most trenchant point of difference ? 
 Religion is supposed to teach that there was a 
 definite moment when ' creation ' came to an 
 end ; and science, on the other hand, is held to
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 157 
 
 show that there has been no such catastrophe, or 
 climax, or cessation of change. It is urged that, 
 in respect of geology, we are now^ — or were for a 
 long time after the teaching of Lyell — less inclined 
 to believe in catastrophic change, more inclined to 
 believe that the earth has its present form on 
 account of the operation of the same powers which 
 we see actually at work, as water and wind and so 
 forth. And, correspondingly, in the larger question 
 of the origin of all things, the anti-catastrophic 
 view is prominent. And, indeed, it is here that 
 we shall find our point of debate in certain minds. 
 For science does indeed declare that the causes 
 which have brought into their present shape the 
 existing forms of life, just as truly as the shape of 
 the earth's crust upon which they move, are forces 
 of the same character as those which are still 
 operating round about us. Here, then, we may 
 formulate the supposed difference. " Science 
 teaches a continuous and still continuing process ; 
 the Bible a * making ' finished long ago." These 
 words, I hope, put the position in a fiiirly 
 extreme form ; but I admit that my own difficulty 
 in these questions will always be to go back in 
 imagination to the state of mind in which these 
 contrasts were trenchant, so as to be able to pro- 
 pose them in sufficiently harsh language. 
 
 Now, with our Bibles in our hands, what have 
 we to say to this supposed contradiction ? 1
 
 158 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 think we shall be wise if we begin by making the 
 note that the question by which we are confronted 
 More than ^^ ^ complicated or compound ques- 
 questi'onis^ tion — a question which is not simply 
 involved. qj^q of thosc which are common to 
 Religion and Science ; for here we have a/so to do 
 with a question which belongs to the inward 
 domestic debates of Religion itself. We have a 
 question, that is to say, about the relation between 
 the Book of Genesis and Religion, as well as a 
 question about the relation between the Book of 
 Genesis and Science. With the relation between 
 the Book of Genesis and Religion I have nothing to 
 do here. That is a question for theological discus- 
 sion, by which men are to show what is the function 
 of the Bible in the whole scheme of religion. Let 
 us retire from it respectfully, remembering that 
 there is a great work still in progress which, 
 although at some particular moment it may pro- 
 duce results which are unwelcome to some be- 
 lievers, will undoubtedly in the end strengthen 
 and clear our faith. The truth will certainly 
 prevail. And just as in respect of the Gospels, 
 whatever may for a time be advanced by a few 
 teachers, the Christian general mind is now greatly 
 reassured concerning the integrity of these records, 
 and the integrity and authenticity of the whole 
 New Testament, so it will undoubtedly be with 
 regard to the Old Testament also. We are
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 159 
 
 passing through a time of some intellectual strain, 
 but the end is certain to be a gain of light to all 
 those who love light. But all this we put on one 
 side ; and for our present purpose it will be our 
 wisdom to accept uncritically such an account of 
 our relation to the letter of Scripture as would be 
 proposed by an adversary. In considering our 
 relations with Natural Science, we put at its out- 
 side value the force of the principle of Natural 
 Selection, and regarded Science as if it were 
 wholly committed to that principle ; and this, of 
 course, is to go beyond the facts. In the same 
 spirit, when we turn to our religious documents, 
 let us put their difficulty at its outside value. 
 This is a reasonable course ; for if we can carry 
 along with us this book clothed, as it has been, 
 partly by artificial efforts, in difficulties of the 
 most extreme kind, all the more certainly shall 
 we be able to defend our use of the same Book, 
 under the interpretation of a sane and rational 
 Christianity. 
 
 One further note may be added by way of 
 preface. It is to be remembered that we are not 
 in a position to estimate, I do not say ^^ ^o not 
 the value of this sacred teaching, but [he^Biff^^ 
 even the value of its effect upon our- ^ro™ outside. 
 selves; and for this reason, that it has steadily 
 impregnated our thinking, not only during the 
 whole extent of our individual lives, but also
 
 i6o THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 during the many Christian generations which 
 went before us. We have been born into a 
 society which, however much it may have been 
 persuaded to suspect the teaching of the Bible, is 
 living upon the intellectual fruits of the Bible. 
 Just as truly as we are in a society which rests 
 upon the moral fruits of the Bible which it some- 
 times disparages, so also are we living in a society 
 which enjoys the intellectual fruits of this teaching. 
 We profit by a priceless education of the mind 
 by dogma. But we are unaware of this advantage, 
 because we have never during conscious life 
 occupied that mental position which is excluded 
 by the Bible teaching. 
 
 Further, we are accustomed to compare the 
 
 teaching of Genesis with the latest statements of 
 
 biological science. A memorable debate 
 
 Genesis ... 
 
 should be in the Times some years ago, between 
 
 compared ii-r-virA 11 
 
 not with Mr. Huxley and the Duke or Argyll, 
 bioiog-y, but illustrated this tendency. The debate 
 ancient cos- turned upon the place to be assigned to 
 mogonies. ^^ Lacertilia ^ in the animal series. The 
 latest teaching of science upon this head was 
 put in contrast with what the Book of Genesis 
 is supposed to have said about the " creeping 
 things." Mr. Huxley compared the statements of 
 the Book of Genesis with the results of palaeon- 
 tology and comparative anatomy, as if the ancient 
 
 ' Lacertilia are lizards, and animals like them.
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION i6i 
 
 Scriptures were to be judged by the measure in 
 which they reached the systematic exactness of a 
 modern book of zoology. But is this a reasonable 
 comparison ? 
 
 What ought we to compare the Bible to in 
 order that we may get a glimpse of its true 
 value ? Surely in regard to such questions we 
 ought first to set it side by side with other ancient 
 cosmogonies, with descriptions which have been 
 made from time to time by the human mind ot 
 the oriofin of the world. There are some who 
 think that such a comparison is destined to 
 abolish our reverence for the Bible narrative. 
 Experience, on the contrary, makes it probable 
 that it will greatly increase our sense of the true 
 value of the Bible ; and this, I think, one may be 
 allowed to conjecture, who is not qualified to 
 compare our Scriptures in anything like detail, 
 or even in the most general way, with the great 
 Eastern mythologies which were given to English 
 readers by Max Miiller, or with the newly 
 recovered Babylonian teachings to which the 
 Bible is said, especially by Professor Delitzsch, 
 to owe so much. But we might all follow with 
 some intelligence a comparison of the Bible story 
 of creation with the myths of Greece, some of 
 which most of us learned in our childhood, or 
 with the cosmogonies of our own ancestors, the 
 ancient stories of the Scandinavian races from
 
 1 62 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 which we ourselves in part spring, and to which 
 it seems probable that we may have by mental 
 constitution the readiest actual access in sympathy 
 and understanding. 
 
 It is quite possible that the value of a com- 
 parison in this direction has been to some con- 
 The mytho- siderable extent overlooked. For it 
 xlftonic rnay well be argued that, if we wish 
 races. j.^ measure our northern debt to the 
 
 Bible by estimate of what, without the Bible, we 
 northerners should have thought of the world, 
 we ought to consider the native impressions, the 
 conjectures and beliefs which actually filled the 
 minds of our blood-ancestors. Look at the 
 wonderfully poetic myths of Scandinavia, and you 
 will see there nothing approaching to a doctrine 
 of God ; you will see a crowd of larger and more 
 or less supernatural beings like ourselves, occupy- 
 ing a scene which can be readily recognized. 
 Gotterdammerung, the Twilight of the Gods, 
 is nothing but a heightened version of those 
 regions of the North, where the sun for a long 
 time in the year does not come above the horizon. 
 These mythologies represent nothing but the 
 conviction of the people that, as a race, they 
 came from a distant cradle ; and those whom in 
 our interpretation of the stories we call the gods, 
 as Thor and Odin — Odin, or Wotan, from whom 
 our own king is lineally descended — these are
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 163 
 
 nothing but earlier members of the same race 
 clothed in a majesty more than human. What 
 was meant, I suppose, in the sixth century by 
 saying that Egbert, of whom our king is the 
 present representative, was descended from the 
 hero who gives his name to Wednesday, was 
 simply that already in the sixth century his 
 ancestry, in the language of the old editions of 
 Burke, was "lost in the mists of antiquity," and 
 the nation had no knowledge of itself but under 
 the leadership of his race. It means nothing less 
 and nothing more ; only the mists are more 
 wondrous and romantic than ours. This language 
 does not attach to the name anything properly 
 comparable to our belief in God. What you see 
 in these stories is a society of larger Norsemen — 
 Baldur, Odin, Freya, and the rest. And the 
 stories of their effect upon Nature are simply the 
 exaggeration of a childish mind. The legend that 
 this or the other god of the Norsemen, when he 
 threw his hammer, could break the mountains, 
 carries with it no doctrine of the origin of the 
 world in which they lived, and in which they were 
 as much enclosed as was the man who sang their 
 stories. We have here no interpretation of the 
 world as such ; we have simply a second imagina- 
 tive peopling of the same scene by men of a 
 larger growth.' 
 
 ' WTiat is true in respect of the cosmology is true still more
 
 i64 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 When we open our Bibles, then, let us note 
 the sane, quiet, steady account which we find 
 there without one word which gives an opening, 
 or with scarcely one word in it which, considered 
 by itself, gives an opening to mere incredulity. 
 And let us compare this with the stories which 
 have occupied the minds of mankind outside the 
 circle of Israel, with the stories of aimless miracle 
 or of bizarre symbolism, which fill the religious 
 myths of the peoples. Put your Bible side by 
 side with these, and not with the latest result of 
 geological research, and you will be amazed at 
 the simplicity, scientific plainness, and verbal clear- 
 ness which belongs to the Semitic narrative 
 which our distant northern race has learned to 
 reverence. 
 
 And now, in the second place, set your Bible 
 alongside of another great mental reality which 
 balances the mythologies of the East or of the 
 North — I mean the philosophy of Greece. 
 
 evidently of the ethics of Holy Scripture. To begin to measure 
 what we of the North have gained in this respect, consider the 
 character of the Odin (Woden, Wotan) of our ancestral reverence, the 
 Father of gods and men ; and that not only in respect of human 
 frailties mistaken for robustness, and naturally prominent in a 
 robust and high-fed poetry, but also in respect of much more funda- 
 mental and less compiexional qualities, ot shifty purpose and vanity 
 and revenge. 
 
 The same contrast does not hold good in anything like the 
 same degree between the Bible and ChaUaean religious writings, of 
 wiiich tlic Prayer of Nebuchadnezzar in the India-House Inscription 
 is a very well-known example.
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 165 
 
 In Greece, thought was in its active stages 
 largely separated from religion, It had little or 
 nothing to do with the myths of the ^. 
 
 ° . -^ , . The philo- 
 
 people, excepting when, as so brilliantly sophy of 
 in Plato,^ those myths, or myths like 
 them, are used in a special manner to give utterance 
 to a thought which would otherwise have escaped 
 the philosopher. But whatever be the function of 
 adopted or original myths in the practice of Plato 
 the seer, we may confidently say that the popular 
 ideal histories of the past are not relied upon in 
 the schools of Greek philosophy as affording any 
 clue to the origin of the world. What, then, 
 do we find in Greek systematic thought .? We 
 find it perpetually haunted by the difficulty, not 
 of explaining, but of formulating any connexion 
 between God and the world at all. Plato is the 
 thinker who adventured furthest in the pursuit of 
 such a formula. And yet, as his great disciple and 
 critic Aristotle declares, the main weakness of his 
 system lies precisely in the lack of it, in his failure 
 to suggest the nature or possibility of a dynamic 
 relation between the Idea and the world ; between 
 what Plato calls " the same and the other." What 
 does this mean } It means that the notion o^ creation 
 
 ' A vast exception indeed. Plato stands wholly apart, or ratiuT 
 he stands in the small and high company of those tlirougli whom 
 knowledge comes to man. On ' Plato the Seer,* see Professor 
 Stewart's great work, The Myt/is of Plato (London : .Macmillan, 
 1905).
 
 i66 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 is one which had not dawned upon the ancient 
 Greek mind. We are so accustomed to this idea — 
 which implies that God and the world are both, 
 though not alike, ' real,' and that God made the 
 world — that we take it without examination as a 
 matter of universal knowledge. Let me remind 
 those who know the past history of thought that 
 the very notion of creation is never securely 
 attained in the thought of Greece. Instead, you 
 are in that thought confronted with these alterna- 
 tives. Either the world of phenomena is strictly 
 unreal, or else the world, the universe, the matter 
 Scepticism which wc scc is itsclf, and as we see 
 or Dualism. [^^ conceived as eternal, even as God is 
 eternal. There are in Plato's words " the one and 
 the other " — this world and the world of ideas, 
 which somehow or other is its original, and which 
 may, in some minds, approach to the notion of God. 
 But the two realities stand side by side uncon- 
 nected, equally eternal. This is a system of strict 
 dualism, which, whimsically enough, it has pleased 
 that great thinker Haeckel to attribute to Christian 
 teachers of all people in the world, but not with- 
 out this measure of excuse that some Christians 
 have allowed him, and those who think with him, 
 to monopolize the word ' monism,' which belongs 
 to all reasonable thought alike. For no thought 
 can be content to acknowledge two fundamental 
 realities, both of them equally eternal. That is
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 167 
 
 the position in which Greek thought finds itself, 
 with an eternal God and an eternal world. The 
 only other position which was possible to ancient 
 thought was one which involved the unreality of 
 the world. In this way, indeed, they reached a 
 monistic thought and an idea of one reality, the 
 reality of God, or of spirit ; but only by denying 
 reality to all the rest of our experience. The 
 alternative seems to be dualism or scepticism, 
 scepticism with regard to the ' not ourselves,' 
 which is also not God. 
 
 Reflexion upon this alternative enables us to 
 perceive the immense value of the apparently 
 simple thought of creation which stands First lead- 
 at the head of our Bible. By this JTf^enTsfs :* 
 thought we secure, on the one hand, a ^''^^^'O"- 
 belief in the relative reality of the external world, 
 but, on the other hand, we secure the unity of our 
 thought, for we describe the external not as eternal, 
 but as having proceeded by the will of the Eternal 
 out of nothing into being. Or, in a closer method 
 of speech, it is in its measure and according to its 
 reality a pouring forth of the one Eternal Spirit 
 Himself, Who has called it into being and put it 
 over against Himself, so that He bestows upon it 
 genuine reality, but such a reality as is not co- 
 eternal with Himself This notion of creation, 
 which is woven in the texture of all modern 
 thouo-ht, believing and unbelieving alike, which is
 
 1 68 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 the common furniture of all our minds, was once 
 an original visitant to the minds of the people of 
 the West and of the North. It came to us from 
 the East, this proclamation that there is but one 
 Eternal, that is God ; but that the one Eternal 
 has called forth or thrust forth from Himself a 
 true reality which we call the world. This is 
 exactly one of those accustomed thoughts for 
 which we are not grateful, but which distinguish 
 the Bible narrative from all other narratives of the 
 same kind. " In the beginning God created the 
 heaven and the earth." He gave it true reality 
 by His own will, remaining ever in Himself the 
 only fountain of being, and abiding still the 
 eternal One which He was before. This is in 
 point of fact the element in Genesis which inspired 
 thought lays hold of and emphasizes. " Where 
 wast thou " — it is the Divine question to Job 
 — "when I laid the foundations of the earth?" 
 And the Psalmist chaunts, "By the word of 
 the Lord were the heavens made^ all the hosts 
 of them by the breath of His mouth. He 
 ofathereth the waters of the sea toQ^ether as an 
 heap. He layeth up the deep in storehouses." 
 "God by His understanding made the heavens. 
 He brought forth the earth above the waters." 
 That was the truth upon which the sequence of 
 religious thought in the great line of those who 
 worship the one God laid its stress — this statement
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 169 
 
 of creation, which in our reading of Genesis 
 we sometimes pass over as if it were matter of 
 course, not observing that in this word we have 
 a force to liberate our thought from the helpless 
 dualism of Greece, and from the grandiose, but 
 often grotesque, mythologies of the North and 
 East, which never answer, which do not even ask, 
 the question how the world came to be, but 
 merely read to us an earlier chapter, a remote, 
 wondrous, magical, unlikely chapter of the 
 phenomenal existence which we know. 
 
 Now, this word "creation " occurs in the first 
 verse of Genesis, and then not again, excepting 
 in a few particular places, to which ^ ~ ^ j. . 
 will draw your attention. It appears translated 
 in the first verse, "In the beginning 
 God created the heaven and the earth," that mass 
 of things which we see ; and then in the twenty-first 
 verse we read, "God created the great sea monsters." 
 Why this indication of one particular kind of the 
 inhabitants of the earth ? I conceive because to 
 the early days of human thought, when men were 
 struck with wonder at strange and large things, there 
 was a constant danger that they might suppose that 
 something in the world was the original or funda- 
 mental part of the world, or even the thing which 
 was outside the mystery of creation, and itself the 
 cause of it. Here and there in different nations 
 men have fixed on this or that thing as, so to
 
 170 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 speak, the root of the world ; some mountain which 
 was God, some stream of ocean which was the 
 Serpent of Eternity. And accordingly in the 
 presence of these great monsters, which seemed 
 almost supernatural, the sacred poet finds it worth 
 while to say. Yes, that also owes its being, not 
 only its structure and its form (as I shall show 
 presently), but its existence to the Almighty ; it is 
 included in my former word, "the heaven and 
 the earth." God also created the great sea 
 monsters. 
 
 The third place of this word's occurrence is that 
 in which the prophet speaks of man. There also, as 
 one plainly sees, an exception might be supposed. 
 Those who already knew that man was made in 
 the image of God, might suppose that while the 
 world of matter in which he lived came from God's 
 hands, there was some difference between his rela- 
 tion to God and that of the world. And therefore 
 the prophet declares that, in respect of existence, 
 the fundamental relation of man to God is the 
 same as the relation of the dust to God. If the 
 dust owes its existence to God, man also owes his 
 existence to God. God created the heaven and 
 the earth ; God created the great sea monsters ; 
 God created man. That is the first great truth 
 written in this book, that the things which we see 
 proceed from God's creation ; that they are not, as 
 we now see them, eternal, nor yet, as some of the
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 171 
 
 schools of Greek thought supposed, formed by 
 God out of a pre-existing material or vXr), as it 
 was called, found ready to His hands. In neither 
 sense was this world eternal, neither as we now see 
 it nor in some earlier formless mode of existence. 
 Its whole being, first and now and last, is due to 
 the ^at of God. 
 
 What is the second point in this book of 
 Genesis .'' What we read is that the matter which 
 God called into being, the heaven and 
 the earth, passed through changes after leading 
 He had called it into being. It was Gen^is:° 
 first waste and void and dark, and the ^"^^' 
 Spirit of God moved upon it ; light appeared, 
 and the division of light and darkness ; and the 
 heavenly bodies and the waters and the dry land. 
 And presently arose the forms of life of different 
 kinds ; first the vegetable, then the aquatic forms 
 in the water, finally the land animals, and, last of 
 all, man. What is the meaning of this history } 
 Taking it generally and in one view, it means 
 this : that the matter which God called into exist- 
 ence by His Will, within the bounds of its own 
 existence, within the history of its own being, has 
 passed through many and important changes — 
 changes, moreover, which have resulted in variety 
 and distinction in a scene originally uniform. The 
 studious modern is reminded of the authoritative 
 expression of Spencer — unstable homogeneity
 
 172 THE scip:ntific temper in religion 
 
 giving place to stable heterogeneity. In contrast 
 to this sacred account, you might put two alter- 
 native theories ; either, as I have already said to 
 a wearisome extent, that the whole scheme always 
 existed as it is, before any act of God, or that the 
 whole was called into existence by God at once, 
 just as it now appears. In contrast to this last 
 statement, the Bible teaches that the world was 
 not called into existence by God just as it now 
 appears, but that after He had caused it to 
 come into existence. He also caused it to pass 
 through manifold changes^ which are described 
 after the figure or symbol of six successive periods 
 of time called ' days.' The rehearsal of the days 
 is to be read in a general sense, and it gives us 
 this most valuable thought ; that the world of 
 material being which God has called into exist- 
 ence has, within its own material history^ passed 
 through many and most important changes, and 
 from a formless state has come into the state 
 which we now see. Is that statement inconsistent 
 with natural history ? Is it not rather a state- 
 ment at which we stand astonished because of the 
 extraordinary degree of its fundamental harmony 
 with the best results of our independent thought ? 
 Contrast it in this respect with all the other cos- 
 mogonies known to us. The world, our Scrip- 
 tures teach us, has passed through manifold 
 forms ; surely this is as much as to say that
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 173 
 
 it has been the subject of an evolutionary- 
 process. 
 
 What shall we take as a third point ? The 
 third point which stands clearly on the face of the 
 record in Genesis is that in this world a third 
 of manifold changes, and which has uniTyof 
 reached its present state after a process I'nanimrte^ 
 which we should call evolution, the "^^"•■e- 
 living beings which inhabit it form, and have 
 always formed, one reality and one whole with 
 the inanimate scene ; that they were formed of 
 the dust of the earth ; that the waters brought 
 them forth ; that the earth brought forth the 
 living creatures each after its kind, cattle and 
 creeping things and beasts of the earth after their 
 kind ; that the vast living population which we 
 see is not, so to speak, like some stock put into a 
 farm from outside, but is, in all its constituents, 
 part of the one reality of the material world. 
 Now, if you will compare this statement with some 
 Eastern stories, you will see how in them this or 
 that power is said to have put its various denizens 
 into the world as if from outside. The Bible 
 stands conspicuous in describing them as the 
 result of what is fitly called a productive energy, 
 a "bringing forth" of the water and of the earth, 
 that is, of the elements which we still see around 
 us. Instead, therefore, of the Bible binding us 
 to some mechanical doctrine such as that which
 
 174 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 we read rightly enough in poetry, in Milton, 
 this notion of the origin of living things is, as 
 1 said before in respect of evolution in general, 
 in a surprising and wonderful harmony with the 
 present results of our thought. 
 
 Further, if the world is shown as the result 
 of progressive change, as it is in Genesis, if the 
 Fourth whole of the populations of the world, 
 unity of man plant and animal, are shown as being 
 with nature, p^^j.^ ^f ^^^ ^^^^ reality, brought forth 
 
 by the elements upon which they live by the 
 power of God and at the command of His 
 word, we may go one step further and say 
 that man is described as being also, on one 
 side of his being, a part of the same reality. 
 God, we read, formed man of the dust of the 
 ground. God is said to have made the other 
 creatures out of the matter which He had 
 called into existence. With regard to man. 
 He is said to have " moulded him." We have 
 here a fresh word. There are three words — 
 words which are translated " create," " make," 
 and "form " ; all of them repeated in one passage 
 in Isaiah : " I have created thee, I have formed 
 thee, yea, 1 have made thee." This word 
 "moulding," or "forming," puts the man on 
 one side of his being in a line with all the other 
 living creatures. That is to say, he has not, on 
 one side of his being, an origin fundamentally
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 175 
 
 different from theirs. He also is a production of 
 the earth on which he lives. 
 
 But, then, Genesis goes on to teach us that, 
 besides this nature of his which is of the earth, 
 which is moulded by God out of the 
 
 ^ The pre- 
 
 dust of the ground, man possesses senceinman 
 
 ° ^ . of an ele- 
 
 something else. He possesses an ni- mentbeyond 
 
 ° ... . , . nature. 
 
 ward power which constitutes his 
 likeness to God — " God breathed into his nostrils 
 the breath of life, and man became a living soul." 
 We must not attempt here to examine the Christian 
 doctrine of the constitution of man, for this is a 
 subject by itself. It is enough if we can accept the 
 statement of the Bible that, on the one hand, man is 
 part of the same reality as the other living creatures, 
 formed out of the same material, lying in series 
 with them, and, like them fundamentally, part of 
 that material universe which God in the beginning 
 called into existence; but that, on the other hand, 
 there is in him a different element, an element of 
 a heavenly nature, an element by virtue of which 
 he is a visitant upon the earth of which he is, on 
 the other side of his nature, a part. 
 
 Now, have we here a statement which conflicts 
 with anything which science is in a Does 
 
 \ ^ ^ r 1 Science 
 
 position to show : Ir any man speak- forbid the 
 
 ^1 c ' i. statement 
 
 ing in the name ot science were to that man is 
 allege that there is no such other side "^on^piex? 
 of man, he would be simply going beyond any
 
 176 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 position which can possibly be established by- 
 proof, and he would be throwing himself into 
 direct collision, not with this or that dogmatic 
 religion, but with the most enduring and the 
 most lasting convictions of every single conscious- 
 ness. It would be indeed a very serious thing 
 if this were so ; a very serious difficulty, that is to 
 say, for science. For if it could be shown that 
 natural science was committed to a position which 
 would make it impossible for those who would 
 follow science to believe in the spiritual nature of 
 man, then I conceive that the same kind of answer 
 must be given as that which Stephenson gave when 
 he was asked whether it would not be a very 
 serious thing if a cow were to stroll in front of 
 one of his new locomotive engines. You will 
 remember his answer, " It would indeed be a 
 most serious thing — for the cow." 1 think we 
 may say that, if it is true that science is com- 
 mitted, which it is not, to any such disparage- 
 ment of the spiritual nature of man, then indeed 
 it would be a most serious position of affiiirs for 
 the present and for the future of science as an 
 auxiliary to speculation ; and we must in that 
 case make ourselves ready for a period of scientific 
 retreat. Physics and biology, from moving as the 
 masterful allies of philosophy, must sink back to 
 the old work of bare scrutiny and description, 
 even it they are not reduced to simple labour
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 
 
 // 
 
 in the service of commerce and locomotion. For 
 all their wider inquiries would certainly perish if 
 they drove full steam ahead on the rocks of 
 the deepest and most unshakable convictions 
 of all sensible men. I think it is plain that 
 we cannot quarrel with the Bible because it bears 
 witness to the complex nature of man. On the 
 contrary, we find here something which precisely 
 matches our daily experience. And, on the other 
 hand, there is nothing in the teaching of science in 
 regard to the lower kinships of man which need 
 offend us as religious people. 
 
 The position, in fact, is not so new as we have 
 supposed. We have all along been aware in our 
 own individual lives from childhood that no revoiu- 
 we had kinship with, that we had some- Jh°o"ught has 
 thing which belonged to, the material t^^en place, 
 world, and something which belonged to the animal 
 world. We were warned not to allow ourselves 
 to go down towards the beast, by following the 
 impulses of mere hunger and anger and the like, 
 which we share with the animal part of creation. 
 We have always known that ; and mankind all 
 along has known the same story. It was known 
 that man on one side was linked to the material 
 world, formed part of it ; dust he was and unto 
 dust he should return, and he lay in series with the 
 rest of the living inhabitants of that world, and 
 was indeed an animal like them. Now, we have 
 
 N
 
 178 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 different conceptions of the relations of animals to 
 one another. We have introduced the idea of 
 their kinship by descent. We see them as a 
 family ; and therefore the man who has always 
 been regarded as like them, in one sense, must 
 now also be recognized as belonging with them to 
 one family. But the new thought is not funda- 
 mentally different from the old ; and it ought 
 not to distract us from the other side of the 
 truth concerning man, that man is in himself 
 a mystery, being, on the one hand, something 
 quite readily explained physiologically, one of the 
 mammalia, one of the quadrupeds, having all 
 the qualities which belong to other quadrupeds ; 
 and, on the other hand, having something which 
 was totally different not only from all the other 
 quadrupeds, but from the whole world, the 
 whole material existence to which he belongs, 
 and which, nevertheless, he looks upon as though 
 from outside. 
 
 We have gathered some points in which the 
 Bible at least foreshadows the surest and some of 
 Recapituia- ^^^ most prominent elements of modern 
 tion. thought. It excludes the two extremes 
 
 of dualism and of scepticism. The reality of 
 the world is asserted, while the thought is ex- 
 cluded of its co-eternity with God. We have the 
 wonderful conception ot creation, which, while we 
 cannot give it definition or expression, acts like a
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 179 
 
 magic in our minds and enables us to believe at 
 one moment in the twofold reality of God and 
 the world, and yet to know that they are at root 
 but one reality, that the spiritual reality which is 
 God has brought forth by His own Will that 
 material reality to which, for a time, He has given 
 a measure, as it were, of His own permanence. 
 In the second place, the Bible teaches us that 
 this world which God calls into being has passed 
 through many changes within the history of time. 
 Thirdly, it teaches us that its living population 
 is not fundamentally separate from the crust of 
 its hills or the water of its seas, but is brought 
 forth by the water and by the earth. Fourthly, 
 it allows us to put along with those other living 
 inhabitants men themselves, on their material and 
 on their animal side. And lastly, it goes on to 
 teach us what is the origin of that other and 
 mysterious Hfe which we also possess, the life of 
 communion, kinship, likeness to God, the image of 
 God within us ; that image which is, on the one 
 hand, the power of reason, to contemplate and to 
 speak about the world in which He puts us, and, on 
 the other hand, the power of virtue, the possession 
 of will, by which we may choose that which is 
 good, and reject that which is evil. 
 
 We must defer to another time any con- 
 sideration of the special difficulties which have 
 been found in the Bible history ; of the fall
 
 I Ho THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 of man and that which lies behind it, the orreat 
 and terrible question of the possibility and 
 meaning of evil. I have endeavoured to-day to 
 suggest that if there is in some minds a great 
 discrepancy between the sound conclusions of 
 scientific inquiry and the sense of the Bible, these 
 difficulties are largely such as belong of necessity 
 to two different forms of language employed 
 about one set of facts. And, in conclusion, I would 
 beg you to consider that, in spite of these strictly 
 inevitable difficulties, the Bible not only remains 
 credible, so that we can understand it and read it 
 as harmonizing with the facts which we imperfectly 
 apprehend at the present day, but that it has been 
 so through many ages and to many different 
 generations of men. 
 
 How wonderful a fact is this ! how much 
 beyond the power of man to frame a statement 
 The Bible which should be at once credible to 
 ma^form*^ thosc wandcrers of Israel who first 
 through perhaps heard this story, and credible 
 many ages, ^-q yg to-day ! It might be easy to 
 write a Genesis which should correspond more 
 closely to what we think we know about the 
 origin of the heavenly bodies, which would 
 bring in clear references to the nebular hypothesis ^ 
 
 ' The Bible account of the appearance of light preceding the 
 formation ut the heavenly bodies is easily credible to us who have 
 learnt the same sequence from the nebular-developement doctrine of
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION i8i 
 
 which is somewhat on its trial, 1 understand, in 
 the schools of astronomy, but which, of course, 
 recovers the vigour of its first youth in the 
 publications of the Rationalist Press. How easy 
 it would be to frame a Bible with a sort of Bible 
 tone about it, but containing all our modern 
 catch-words, showing man as the result of modi- 
 fication by descent, and so forth. But who would 
 have believed such a story a hundred years ago ? 
 Who would have believed it when first these pro- 
 phetic scenes were put before the people of Israel } 
 Or, to put a simpler and still more familiar case. 
 If Moses had announced that the earth went 
 round the sun, would not his contemporary critics 
 have stepped to their tent doors and triumphantly 
 refuted the statement by the plain evidence of their 
 senses, which report that, day by day, the sun rises 
 from the eastern, and in due course sinks below the 
 western horizon ? Would it not have been said it 
 was an attempt to blind the eyes of the faithful ? 
 It is not a simple matter, even at a given moment 
 and for the moment, to say what is at once true 
 and credible. Credulity causes many things to 
 be believed which are not true ; and suspicion or 
 ignorance causes some things which are true to be 
 disbelieved. It is, in fact, the very problem of 
 
 Physical science. It was also credible to early Israel. But this would 
 not have been so if the ancient dociiinenl had described the Re(]uence 
 in modem language.
 
 1 82 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 utterance to find a description of reality which 
 shall penetrate to assent, and to say what is believed 
 without leaving a false impression. But the diffi- 
 culty is vastly increased when the statement of 
 truth is to remain credible to more than one 
 generation. It would be impossible now for us 
 to speak in language which should be credible to 
 those who thought l^he Vestiges of Creation a 
 scientific book ; and probably, if any of us are 
 destined to be alive fifty years hence, we shall 
 meet with new doctrines of science which are as 
 unintelligible to us as those of the old days are 
 becoming. What a revelation has to do, what a 
 lasting statement of the relation between God and 
 the world has to achieve, is to speak in general 
 terms of the deepest part of the truth, to illustrate 
 that truth by some forms of speech which may 
 remain not only true but also credible through all 
 the diversities of intellig-ence which belono; to 
 different times and to different classes of men. 
 That is exactly what our Book has done. And I 
 believe that, if you consider this fact more fully 
 (as you will find it illustrated in Mr. Gladstone's 
 book, l^he Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture)^ 
 you will conclude that a great deal of weight 
 is to be given to it ; and instead of considering 
 Genesis as a series of rash statements which it is 
 impossible for a modern scientific reader to retain 
 in his belief, you will see in it the most wonderful
 
 THE BIBLE AND EVOLUTION 183 
 
 example of a general and devout, poetic but 
 inspired, description, in historical or narrative 
 form, of the world we live in and of ourselves 
 who inhabit it ; and you will acknowledge with 
 thankfulness the wonderful way in which these 
 simple poetic utterances steer the mind through 
 various snares which have swallowed up genera- 
 tions of acute thinkers in former days ; how they 
 guard us from polytheism, from pantheism, from 
 dualism, and yet equally exclude that denial of 
 all reality to the world which has been the refuge 
 of so many devout minds. 
 
 An attitude of apology, in the English sense 
 of the word, is not what is justified by a deliberate 
 review of the early chapters of Genesis. The 
 followers of science should rather make a bold 
 claim for them as containing the foundations ot 
 the only religious system which can support u 
 robust and genuine natural philosophy.^ 
 
 » I venture here to refer to a single passa<^c (pp. 109-111) of" 
 Religion and Science (Longmans), in which several important con- 
 siderations about the Bible and modern thought are very briefly 
 indicated.
 
 VIII 
 
 BIOLOGY AND OUR VIEW OF 
 HUMAN NATURE 
 
 Omission not oblivion — The defence of scientific anthropology at 
 the bar of Faith — I. Biological doctrine of the origin of man. 
 The position not really new — In the analysis of man the positive 
 nobility does not become insignificant — And, besides analysis, 
 we had a brief historical view — The nature of a thing is deter- 
 mined by its perfect developement — We have now a long history 
 in place ot the analysis of inspection — But this affords no reason 
 for parting with our knowledge of what man is — II. Natural 
 Law in Human Life — Law and Freedom do not vary inversely 
 — III. Mental Physiology — Physiology is not a substitute for 
 Psychology — What is memory ? — IV. The direct effect of 
 scientific studies upon spiritual appreciation — Selective attention 
 — As we cannot avoid or correct it, we must allo-ivjor selective 
 attention in our view of life — The absorbing character of 
 Biology — Charles Darwin. 
 
 '& 
 
 " Behold, even the moon hath no brightness, and the stars are not pure in 
 His sight : how much less man, that is a worm ! And the son of man, 
 which is a worm !" — Job xxv. 5, 6 (R.V.). 
 
 We come near the end of our conferences with a 
 strong sense of regret that so little ground has 
 Omission ^^^^ Opened, and that in those matters 
 not oblivion. Y^rhich have been touched, we have 
 seemed able to make so small a selection of 
 points. Silence must not be taken as proof
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 185 
 
 of a complete want of appreciation of the 
 many connected topics and lines of thought 
 which have been left without mention. Of these 
 the most important is the study of the transition 
 from the general Theism which we have been 
 attempting to illustrate, to the heights and depths 
 of the Christian Creed and Life. To show this 
 transition is the great task of our time. But 
 during this particular course of addresses we can- 
 not, however humbly, contribute to it except so 
 far as in the next lecture, which will be the last, 
 we may be able to suggest certain heads of pro- 
 cedure. But of the questions which lie closer to 
 Natural Science, the most difficult, and in some 
 respects the most painful, is the question of the 
 place and dignity of Human Nature. 
 
 In order to set a few thoughts on this head in 
 a convenient order, one may, in the first place, 
 speak as if in justification of the The defence 
 modern doctrines of science at the bar °nthro"^'^'^ 
 of Christian opinion. That is to say, fhe^^^of 
 one may attempt to show to believers ^^^^• 
 that there is less which is intolerable than we are 
 sometimes inclined to think in the suggestions 
 of Natural Science in this matter. And in the 
 second place, one may endeavour to defend our 
 real position against what is actually dangerous 
 in the Naturalist attack. Here, as always, we 
 use the words ' Naturalist ' and ' Naturalistic,' not
 
 1 86 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 in their scientific application, but to indicate that 
 philosophic doctrine which, to speak briefly and 
 roughly, attempts to make Science do the work 
 of Faith as well as its own, and to exclude from 
 the number of those things which may fairly affect 
 our view of reality all considerations which do 
 not fall under the definition of natural inquiry. 
 
 Now, if we are to make a case before Chris- 
 tians for much of the teaching of Science, we 
 must assume that the Christian who judges is 
 possessed of real convictions. Indeed, the whole 
 work of defining the relations of Science to 
 Religion is of very little value for a Christian who 
 has not found the positive grounds of belief in 
 his own soul and of belief in God. Unless he 
 is standing firm upon a real experience of faith, 
 justified and verified by its own proper tests 
 (tests which we cannot here deal with, but which 
 are continually illustrated in the regular teaching 
 of the Church), he approaches all questions of 
 relation in a nervous spirit, which very easily 
 becomes a spirit of alarm and hostility. He is 
 jealous of every approach of criticism, and flings 
 himself, as in the panic of dreams, into terrified 
 attack upon the opposite side. Our faith, if it is 
 a real faith, does not depend (as I fear 1 must 
 have said before in the course of these addresses) 
 upon the gathering of many particulars of proof 
 out of the world of sense-experience. It is not
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 187 
 
 to be shaken by the explanation of activities of 
 nature which were formerly considered especially 
 mysterious ; for it never rested upon any supposed 
 fault in the universality of law. It would not be 
 shaken if the gulf which lies for thought between 
 organic and inorganic matter were for thought to 
 be bridged ; for it has never rested upon this or 
 any other interval.^ It would not be shaken if 
 
 ' While these pages are in the press comes (June 20, 1905) the 
 news of Mr. Burke's observations of the behaviour of sterilized 
 bouillon when it is shut up in a tube containing radium. These 
 observations may well in time prove to have markeci a most eventful 
 step in discovery. 
 
 Meanwhile an able and thoughtful writer in the Daily 
 Chronicle says of the minute bodies detected by Mr. Burke, 
 " In a word, they are alive ; " and adds, " It is impossible to resist 
 the conclusion that he (Mr. Burke) has demonstrated the evolution 
 of living matter from lifeless matter." 
 
 That is our difficulty. Conclusions arc what some of us cannot 
 resist. They are so veiy attractive. A clergyman, learning to ride 
 a bicycle under the tuition of a boy of fifteen, pleaded that he could 
 not remember to use the brake. " Oh, but in that case," said the 
 young instructor, " you must give up the idea of riding a bicycle." 
 
 But the writer of that article, whose simply scientific ardour here 
 runs fast, would not, I think, differ from us on the larger question 
 which some call metaphysical. I hope that he would agree that if 
 Mr. Burke has found an unchallengeable case of abiogencsis, he has 
 simply made us contemporary spectators at first hand of the mysterious 
 advent of life which we have always known must at some time or other 
 have been accomplislied in the past. 
 
 Bouillon, of course, however dead and sterilized, is not an inorganic 
 compound. For a recovery in experiment of the first origin of life 
 we need something quite different from the reappearance of life in a 
 lifeless infusion made of material which was once living. But, if 
 this limitation is remembered, it is difficult to exaggerate the present 
 interest and the possible importance of Mr. Burke's observations. 
 
 Articles on tlie same subject in the S/caiJtirJ lA' Junt: 21, and the
 
 1 88 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 that happened which a writer pictured for us a 
 year or two ago — if we received a message from 
 Mars declaring that in that planet beings like 
 ourselves had found the proof of atheism. It 
 would make no difference to this real faith if all 
 the stars sang in chorus, " There is no God." 
 This would only show to the man who was at all 
 beginning to be a real Christian that something 
 had gone amiss with what, thank God, we find 
 in fact to be the unchanging witness of the skies. 
 True faith is not dependent upon nature, it does 
 not arise by the accumulation of a multitude of 
 particulars in experience ; it grows from a root of 
 vital intercourse. 
 
 I speak here as to those who have a firm hold 
 of our Christian faith. Like all of us, you wish 
 to see it stronger, and you look for the tests by 
 which it may be ascertained, and especially for the 
 
 Westminster Gazette of June 24. ("Radium and Life "), are, I venture 
 to say, models of what such articles should be, in respect ot scientific 
 caution as well as of metaphysical liberty. 
 
 No comment, indeed, could be better than that of Mr. Burke 
 himself upon the discovery which he thinks he may have reached. 
 He says, " In fact, if it can be shown that tlust and earth can produce 
 life on account of radio-activity, it would only confirm the truth ot 
 Biblical teaching." 
 
 We seem to have reached in the general Press the level of liberality 
 on which the Guardian stood twenty years ago, and earlier. A large 
 chapter of discussion is closed. 
 
 But how many years must still pass before such words as Mr. 
 Burke's overtake, in the minds of a certain larger public, the effect 
 of arguments of a different tone, written long ago, and «oxu offered m 
 cheap forms as the living utterance of science.
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 189 
 
 experiences by which it may be made to grow in 
 vigour ; but still you are not at all in danger of 
 giving it up because at a given point you cannot 
 come to terms with Science. On the contrary, 
 you are in more danger of saying, " This Natural 
 Science of the modern world is a false and bad 
 science, because it challenges our inward conviction 
 of the rank in being ,and of the intrinsic value, 
 of human life." To such a temper, to such a 
 feeling, what can we say ? 
 
 I. Ought we not to begin by saying this ^ 
 The position in which we find ourselves is not 
 essentially a new position. We lately 
 glanced at it from another point of view doctrin°e^or 
 when we were considering the Bible. nian°"The° 
 The position is that Natural Science PSly n"ew°^ 
 endeavours to disclose under the form 
 of a history of origins what we have always known 
 about human nature under the form of a 
 description of its actual state and of its observed 
 course in individuals. We always knew that 
 human nature was a great mystery, a mystery of 
 unmeasured apparent inconsistency. There cannot 
 be added to our thought a single word of humilia- 
 tion ; we have drunk deep of the cup of disgrace 
 from the very first. " What is man," says the 
 inspired poet, " that Thou regardest him ? or the 
 son of man, that Thou considerest him ? " He is 
 stuff, and made of stuff, and is perpetually remade
 
 1 90 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 from the same source, during his short span in 
 this world. He is dependent, to the last degree 
 of humiliation, upon the material things beneath 
 him. A pinch too much of some ingredient in 
 his food may not merely wipe out his animal life ; 
 that would be a minor token of subjection. It 
 may do more ; it may prove strong enough to dis- 
 order his moral nature, those powers and qualities 
 by which he stands above the world. We knew 
 of old that heat and cold and approaching 
 thunderstorms, circumstances of soil and air, 
 conditions of light or situation, we knew that 
 these could penetrate to what seemed to be the 
 very roots of his character. We knew that a 
 man's mercy, his justice, his confidence, even his 
 integrity, may all suffer eclipse after a sleepless 
 night ; that he is apt in the confusion of fever to 
 seem another man and not himself. And, more- 
 over, for some considerable time past we have 
 known that if you could safely, without imperil- 
 ling his life, lay a trifling pressure upon certain 
 areas of the brain's surface, he would cease to 
 exhibit the thought which belongs to the defini- 
 tion of his nature, and consciousness itself would 
 be for the time extinguished under merely 
 material influences. And yet "what a piece of 
 work is a man (this quintessence of dust) ! How 
 noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in lorm 
 and moving, how express and admirable ! in action.
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 191 
 
 how like an angel ! in apprehension, how like a 
 god ! " ' 
 
 All this, or almost all of this, we knew per- 
 fectly well from the old days. Was it not known 
 in the least critical ages that this immortal spirit, 
 this great creature in communion with God, this 
 soul who, as the Greeks said, was " the measure of 
 all things," was still but " the paragon of animals," 
 and had only to be struck hard enough with a 
 sharp point between the ribs and he became 
 nothing but stuff for the camp followers to drag 
 out of sight. It is a very old, old, sad story, 
 the story of the mixed nature of man. And all 
 throuo^h the orenerations we have managed this 
 difficulty, we have been enabled to bear with it 
 by reason of lour ineradicable consciousness of his 
 essential nobility. 
 
 All along men have said, in different tones, 
 " The negative facts, the low facts, do not avail to 
 extinguish the witness of the great intheanaiy- 
 facts ; more than that, they do not th^e^poSe 
 possess any real tendency even to dim no^'becomr 
 that witness. So St. John says about insignificant, 
 spiritual life in general, " The light shineth in the 
 darkness, and the darkness does not put it out." 
 It is indeed a physical fact of great significance 
 that the greatest depth of darkness not only does 
 not avail to put candles out, but even has no 
 
 ' Hnmiet, act ii. so. 2, line (<v't.) 320.
 
 192 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 tendency to do so. The lights do not shine the 
 least less truly, or less brightly, because the dark- 
 ness is let in upon them. And all positive facts 
 have this character ; all facts of positive spiritual 
 consciousness and life have, through the whole 
 history of mankind, held their place in human 
 convictions, in the very presence of facts which 
 seemed to be incompatible with them. 
 
 But, further, we did of old possess a hr'ief 
 
 historical view of human nature. We did not go 
 
 very far, but we did know about our- 
 
 And, besides , .,,.., i ^ o i 
 
 analysis, we sclvcs as individuals what bolomon 
 
 had a brief ^ j r ^l • • C 
 
 historical put on record or the origin even or a 
 ^^^^' king. Every one of us had the same 
 
 strange little beginning ; every one had the like 
 pale or dark-red wrinkled aspect once, when first 
 he looked upon the world and cried out at 
 the light, and felt feebly after things, not know- 
 ing what he desired, and did not recognize those 
 who loved him and whom he needed. And 
 when first our feet touched the ground, we all 
 staggered wildly in an absurd manner, aimless, 
 confused, unpractical, giving no promise what- 
 ever of the strong man, showing indeed not 
 nearly so clear an indication of what the adult 
 would be as do the infant stages of lowlier forms 
 of life. " I also," says the King in the Book, 
 " when 1 was born drew in the common air, and 
 fell upon the kindred earth, uttering, like all, tor
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 193 
 
 my first voice, the self-same wail." ^ And later, 
 in the petulance of early strength, in what Faber 
 rather cruelly calls the " inevitable ugliness of 
 youth," few hints are in some lives given of the 
 nobility of sacrifice which will appear later ; of the 
 infinite courage which is in man, and of the insight 
 of which he becomes capable. There are many 
 young lives full of light ; but in some which will 
 afterwards be worthy, there is hardly a gleam of 
 wisdom, less than a gleam of goodness in any real 
 sense of that word. All this we have known from 
 the beginning, and accordingly it ought not now to 
 shock us when the same knowledge comes in a new 
 form. We ought to have drunk deep enough of 
 this humiliating truth not to be alarmed when we 
 hear that the history may be extended beyond the 
 individual life, and that there is a " Law of Von 
 Baer " with respect to human developement also ; 
 that is to say, that the individual growth represents 
 in small the conjectured history of remote descent. 
 If this is true, surely it does not add essentially to 
 our humiliating, to our humbled position. We 
 are sharers indeed in the material world, with all 
 its lowly circumstances ; but the nature The nature 
 of a whole must be judged by its best, dlfermS^ 
 must be judged by its greatness and its £lop^^*^^ 
 heights, by its end and not by its begin- '"^"^• 
 nings. So we learned from Aristotle long ago ; and 
 
 ' Wisdom of Solomon, vii. 1-7. 
 
 O
 
 194 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 it is impossible by any contemplation of the lowlier 
 facts of life to get rid of the meaning of the great 
 facts, to lose — not to point now to the highest ot 
 all — the significance of the poets or of St. Paul 
 as he lives so freely in thoughts so great ; and, what- 
 ever this or that critic may sometimes think, about 
 his premiss, about his right to speak, yet reasons 
 so wisely, so solidly, moving at home in the great 
 world of great ideas ; and drawing, moreover, from 
 that world forces operative in the ordinary scene, 
 operative for society, creating, as in the human 
 sense of the word St. Paul in fact created, all that 
 we call modern Europe. We have to judge 
 things by their end, by what they come to. And 
 supposing, as I said lately about the purpose of 
 merely organic life, supposing we could trace back 
 the series to the humblest beginning, we have 
 only in consequence to conclude that in that form- 
 less beginning lay all the promise and potency of 
 an almost unimaginable wealth. 
 
 With regard to man we are not in a position 
 to draw this conclusion, to reduce what we see to 
 a lowly origin. We seem forced to suppose a 
 complex origin for that complex nature. But so 
 far as the point is concerned that all things must 
 be judged by their excellence, we are on exactly 
 the same safe ground with regard to man as 
 with regard to organic life in general. And 
 the point I would make to Christians is this
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 195 
 
 — that baffling as it is to us and to all men, to 
 contemplate this material past of the race, with 
 anything like equanimity or with anything like 
 clearness of thought (for it lies quite beyond any 
 conception we can form of it), yet it ought not to 
 add essentially to the old humiliation in which we 
 have all along walked. For from the beginning 
 man has known himself to be on the one side a 
 creature walking in a vain shadow and disquieting 
 himself in vain, whose life, according to a certain 
 measure of judgement, is but a toilful rise and 
 a helpless fall. With uncertain and dangerous 
 advance he reaches, through a youth which shows 
 already the incidents of decay, the level ground 
 of a momentary prime ; and presently weakness 
 appears in the harp of a thousand strings, and the 
 harmony is silenced, the beauty is formless, the 
 man is nothing. We always knew that about 
 him on one side ; but this could not extinguish 
 the other consciousness, and it could not rob of 
 its significance the other and greater facts. If, 
 then, and quite provisionally, we were to accept, 
 as having some measure of probability, the 
 statements proposed to us on the side of 
 biology, we ought to feel that they do not 
 add essentially to the puzzle of mankind. They 
 have only read out in fuller form the dusty 
 side of our nature which was all along familiar 
 to us.
 
 196 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 They have read it out suh specie histori^e ; 
 they have shown it as a sequence of events. 
 We have Formerly it was dealt with simply by 
 S^\°n ^ way of analysis. We said of old, there 
 alfa'iys^s of ^ is the lower part of man and the higher 
 inspection, ^p-^vt. But now we are invited to think 
 that there was a lower past of man which explains 
 the lower part ; and we must reassert the grounds 
 for believing also in a higher past, and in the 
 higher possibilities of the future. But in this we 
 are merely reading out into a new formula, under 
 a new category — the category of time — what all 
 along was perfectly familiar to us under the 
 category of substance, as an answer to the question 
 of what we are. To say how we became what we 
 are does not alter the main effect of the facts. 
 We always had to bear up under that weight, 
 under that knowledge of our earthliness, of our 
 material existence, of our animal kinship ; and 
 because that kinship is read out to us after a 
 fashion which may not stand the test of time, — 
 for my part I think it will, though just now, with 
 greater light upon its own difficulties, it does not 
 stand quite so well in the battle of thought as it 
 did at first — this does not essentially change the 
 problem which has always been before all those 
 who considered seriously the nature of man, the 
 mystery of man's existence. If then we could all 
 along bear with the low because of that brightness
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 197 
 
 which shone above it, so we ought to be able to 
 bear with the new story of origins. 
 
 And certainly this story provides no ground 
 for parting with our positive convictions. On 
 the contrary, if it could be shown to g^^^j^^^ 
 come into direct conflict with these, affords no 
 
 ' reason for 
 
 then it is quite plain to us which of parting with 
 
 . ^ .„ ^ ourknow- 
 
 the doctrines will turn out to represent ledge of 
 
 . . 1 1 • 1 1 what man is. 
 
 the passing opinion and which the un- 
 shakable conviction. It is the story of the 
 material things which shifts and changes under 
 the light of advancing knowledge, different tempers 
 of inquiry, different fashions in the world of 
 thought. It is the abiding conviction of the time- 
 less element in the nature of man which stands sure, 
 and which alone can account for the fact that he has 
 so much as any curiosity, far less than any power 
 to satisfy his curiosity, with regard to the scene in 
 which, on one side of his nature, he forms a part. 
 
 It is to be confessed that studies in the 
 Natural History of man are easily found gloomy 
 and uninteresting ; if unbalanced, they become 
 depressing ; they ought not to be found alarming. 
 
 II. From the suggestion of apology tor the 
 new Natural History of man we have now to 
 turn to the defence of our old „ „ , , 
 
 II. Natural 
 
 spiritual convictions aeainst a natural- V,^"'*",.. 
 
 r o Human Life. 
 
 istic attack. 
 
 This defence is weakened, as it seems to me,
 
 198 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 by a certain unwise and unnecessary intolerance. 
 The method of science is a method of limitation. 
 A purely natural science is of necessity excluded 
 from the study of spiritual laws. But it would 
 be a mistake to conclude from this that the facts 
 of spirit and those subject to natural inquiry are 
 contained in mutually exclusive spheres. It is a 
 notion like this which constitutes a grave danger 
 for spiritual thought. There has been a tendency 
 among those who believe in spirit, in freedom, in 
 will, and personality, to speak as if the advance of 
 the observed range of natural law was a menace to 
 the kingdom of freedom ; as if the place of freedom 
 began where law was left behind, so that it became 
 the interest of those who believe in freedom to 
 keep back the advancing waves of manifested law. 
 (The advance is, of course, the advance of a mani- 
 festation^ for the law itself is now what it must always 
 have been.) That notion haunts the minds of 
 many people who believe in God, or who believe in 
 man ; and consequently it has been accepted and 
 absorbed by men upon the other side. The other 
 side has seen an enemy in the name of freedom as 
 if it challenged the integrity of law. Even in 
 these last few weeks, one of the writers in the 
 Times correspondence about Lord Kelvin's speech 
 suggests that the assertion of a spiritual reality, 
 or a directive power underlying organic life would, 
 if it were granted, sweep away (I am not giving
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 199 
 
 the words) all that Darwin has won for us. And 
 the writer justifies this assertion by showing what 
 Darwin has indeed won for us, namely, the 
 advantage of bringing organic life within the 
 range of our conception of law.^ 
 
 There is no doubt that formerly natural law 
 was thought of as extending through the material, 
 or merely mechanical movements of the world, 
 but stopping short at the boundaries of organic 
 life. The inclusion of organic changes within 
 the conception of law has indeed, been powerfully 
 promoted by the Darwinian movement ; and, in 
 fact, this change of thought has been welcomed 
 now for a long time by Churchmen — for example, 
 in the pages of our Church journals — as the most 
 important result of Darwin's work, and of the 
 work which he inspired. As this work goes on, 
 uniformities of law will be traced in organic nature 
 as truly and with a more intense interest than in 
 inorganic nature. But the extension of the range 
 of law does not carry with it the restriction of the 
 range of freedom. Freedom does not find its 
 refuge where law is absent or unknown. On the 
 contrary, freedom never has its chance excepting 
 in so far as the free person not only is existing 
 under a system of law, but has discovered its 
 nature, and so is able to lay hands upon its 
 advantages. Long ago Hegel said that necessity 
 
 ' See note on p. 273.
 
 200 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 and freedom were the same thing looked at from 
 different sides ; and this statement represents not 
 Law and simply a truth of the higher logic, but 
 not v^^ ^° ^ f^ct of experience. What we find in 
 inversely. experience is that law is everywhere, 
 and that freedom, without being absolute, runs all 
 through it and increases in the ratio in which the 
 law is observable and observed. 
 
 What is society ? Society is a system of 
 necessities. If there was not a regular, however 
 imperfectly known, sequence in the developement 
 of the minds and actions of nations, there could be 
 no science of politics, no science of history, no 
 forecast, no judgement, no prudence. In one point 
 of view, political art rests upon the knowledge of 
 the laws by which nations move from point to 
 point. But what is political action viewed from 
 another side ? Is it not precisely the activity of 
 persuading men to do what before they did not 
 wish to do } And in the smaller spheres of 
 human intercourse, social life is altogether a net- 
 work of necessities, but it is at the same time 
 altogether a network of influences, of persuasions, 
 of asking, and of granting or refusing what is asked. 
 It is, therefore, a fact of experience, and not only a 
 conclusion of absolute philosophy, that necessity 
 and freedom penetrate one another. Their 
 spheres are not separate, so that the one stops 
 where the other begins. They arc rather two
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 201 
 
 mysterious aspects of one given reality. Con- 
 sequently, if law comes to be read in all the doings 
 of life and can be traced in clear sequences in 
 many parts of our being which, at one time, we 
 thought rode aloft of law, this will not by itself 
 narrow the range or lessen the evidences of 
 freedom. But the kind of fight which we have 
 kept up against the mechanical explanation of 
 human life has given rise, and has given roots, to 
 the conviction in the minds of many good men 
 who study especially the law-side of things, that 
 the two explanations are alternative and mutually 
 exclusive explanations. It is the very vocation of 
 thoughtful believers to resolve superficial con- 
 trasts and oppositions. And it is our duty to 
 remember, with regard to this matter of human 
 descent, human heredity, human national character- 
 istics, and all that goes to make man what man is 
 and the several kinds of men what they severally 
 are, that when the whole range of events comes to 
 be drawn within the scope of law, this will not 
 exclude the fact of freedom. 
 
 III. We pass to another head of what is formid- 
 able in the naturalist criticism of the spiritual doctrine 
 of life, I mean the new psychology, the ^j Mental 
 study of mind which rests upon physi- Physiology, 
 ology. There, again, we find a source of confusion 
 in the tendency to treat the physiological explana- 
 tion as a sufficient alternative for that which uses
 
 202 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 the terms of spirit, rather than as a new version 
 in different language. The older psychological 
 systems were the work of men who contemplated 
 the reality itself which we actually possess in our 
 consciousness ; who asked themselves, without 
 much considering the external conditions of con- 
 sciousness, what consciousness itself contained. 
 They answered, it contains names, concepts, 
 judgements, purposes, and so forth. Such a study 
 deals with the fact itself as we know it at first hand 
 in our own minds. The mental physiologist, on the 
 other hand and as a complementary work, attempts 
 to find out the machinery by which the thing itself, 
 the thought, finds its ground in our bodily frames. 
 And a great deal of good will be done now that 
 professional psychologists are more and more 
 ready to learn from physiology this physical aspect 
 or condition of the thought which is the direct 
 object of their study. For in this way they are 
 likely to bring to an end the half-hostile feelings 
 with which pure psychology has sometimes been 
 regarded by the physical or medical student of 
 mental facts. 
 
 His explanation will then no longer appear to 
 be an alternative exclusive of the other ; and yet 
 how easy it is to set it up as if it were such an 
 alternative. A man says, I am full of grief and 
 depression of heart because of the sense of my 
 sins. And the medical account of the matter
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 203 
 
 might, 1 suppose, if it were thoroughly successful, 
 trace all these impressions to changes in the circula- 
 ting medium, the blood ; to degradation of tissue 
 in the brain ; to want of proper co-ordination in 
 the different parts of the great central exchange- 
 office of our nervous system. It follows that the 
 physiological critic in pressing for attention to 
 the physical basis of mental facts often alarms the 
 theologian or psychologist by his able presentation 
 of the truth about nervous impulses, about senso- 
 motor, and ideo-motor reflex actions. Still worse, 
 passing beyond the geography of our confined 
 education, he describes in language sometimes 
 invaded by psychological terms, the lobes and 
 convolutions of the brain until at last you almost 
 catch the impression that he is conscious of aff^erent 
 impulses, conscious of the lobes of the brain, con- 
 scious, as I once heard a distinguished physiologist 
 in a hurry say, of the large pyramidal cells which 
 distinguish part of the brain's cortex. Conscious- 
 ness is not in fact thus richly furnished. What 
 the consciousness reports is not the afferent im- 
 pulse. The consciousness reports feelings, names 
 of things, judgements about things, motives 
 and, in more highly developed natures, regret, 
 repentance, aspiration. We know these other 
 facts, the grey matter and the ganglia, by in- 
 ductive science ; by the observation of other brains 
 than our own, by dissecting the tissues and nerve
 
 204 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 tracts of other organisms, and by putting, as we 
 say, two and two together. In health we are in 
 no sense conscious of them except as ideas. Of 
 physiological ideas one is conscious as of other 
 ideas, but one is not conscious in that sense of 
 physiological processes. 
 
 It may seem absurd to dwell upon so easily 
 recognized a confusion ; but the defensive attitude 
 of the theologian, finding ground for alarm in the 
 suggestion of a material basis for the movements 
 of thought and will, may be traced to a conviction 
 very natural when we consider the language of 
 some physiologists, that material studies in general 
 have produced an alternative and hostile account 
 of what theology has hitherto known as the soul. 
 And there is no complete absence of this kind of 
 confusion even on the side of the physiologists 
 themselves. 
 
 We ought, therefore, gladly to welcome all the 
 help that we can get from those who tell us of 
 Physiology ^^^ machinery of the body which in a 
 sftitute^for"''' '^'1''^'"^^'" '^^^ Understood accompanies 
 Psychology, thought and constitutes its material 
 condition ; and we ought, indeed, to stand very 
 humbly, wondering at the great mystery of the 
 inter-connexion between the two sets of facts ; and 
 quite frankly to confess how new this knowledge 
 is to us, and how startling it is to learn that 
 materia] changes can so profoundly condition and
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 205 
 
 modify the movements which we thought to be 
 quite independent of them. We have much to 
 learn in this direction. But still all that we can 
 learn of the machinery of mental processes and of 
 co-ordinating arrangements, of structural changes 
 which may be conceived as accompanying the 
 observed fact of mental associations — all this does 
 not lift the veil from the secret foundation of 
 thought itself, that thought which always remains 
 distinct from every material object. The nervous 
 organization is indeed the nearest edge, the most 
 closely apposed part, as it were, of that material 
 scene which must always remain other than the 
 thinking subject which perceives it and co-ordi- 
 nates it and brings all those complex formulae of 
 law into it. But in the study of nerve we have 
 not bridged the gulf between matter and that 
 which is not matter. 
 
 Take, for example, the case of memory. 
 What I may venture to call the unsophisticated 
 psychology which took little account of ^j^^^^ ^^ 
 physiology might speak of memory as memory? 
 almost wholly mysterious. How does the man 
 look back upon his own past ^ How does he 
 measure the present accomplishment against a 
 former state of being ? What is the continuum on 
 which the two states abide and by some scale in 
 which they are measured } What is it in the 
 man which judges and disparages his own present
 
 2o6 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 power of judgement ? Or, if this seems simple, 
 what shall we say of the moral comparison of self 
 with self, a comparison at once more delicate and 
 more severe ? How does the man condemn his 
 present moral apprehension by the standard which 
 was his own yesterday ? And the physiologist is 
 ready to answer : All these mental connexions 
 have a material basis. You undertook a certain 
 action at a former period under a certain stimulus 
 coming from the sensory organs to the brain. 
 The brain worked out suitable motor impulses 
 to meet the case ; and these received a certain 
 measure of success and satisfaction. And both 
 the reception of the sensory afferent impulses and 
 the production of the energising efferent impulses 
 left their impressions upon the nervous tissues.^ 
 There the action left its record in subtle changes 
 of structure or state ; and this record is memory. 
 When to-day you undertake an action of the same 
 kind but with a lower degree of energy, it leaves 
 a new but comparable result in the same organiza- 
 tion, and it is in the likeness and difference of 
 these two records that the impression of improve- 
 ment or defect is found. 
 
 Such an explanation, phrased in a better way 
 than this, seems for the moment to take the 
 
 • The afferent impulses are those which travel from the nerve- 
 endings to the centre ; the efferent impulses are those which travel 
 from the centre to the nerve-endings.
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 207 
 
 mystery from memory, from self-reproach, from 
 regret. It is only after a pause that the question 
 asserts itself. But who read the records ? Who 
 compared them ? Did the old record read the 
 new one, or the new record the old ? And how 
 did the new experience itself find power to measure 
 itself against the old ? Or was there, after all, 
 some third power which looked at them both, or 
 was conscious of them both, which felt (as, with- 
 out knowing its exact nature, we feel the sense 
 impression) the net result of the sense impression 
 translated into terms of consciousness ? To 
 speak of memory as a mere matter of successive 
 nervous events is something like saying that in 
 a phonograph the record on the second half of 
 the cylinder was able to recognize its own likeness 
 to, or difference from, the record on the first part 
 of the cylinder. 
 
 No. The clearest physiological explanation, 
 most valuable as all such things are, of the 
 machinery of memory, never arrives at discover- 
 ing that mysterious unity upon which, as on a 
 kind of conscious sheet, all these changes tran- 
 spire, the unity of the personal consciousness. 
 The physiological and the spiritual accounts of 
 these matters have been unwisely, and without 
 justification, thrown into antagonism, as if they 
 were mutually exclusive alternatives. They are 
 really two readings arrived at by different
 
 2o8 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 approaches to the same set oi facts. To use 
 once more a foolish example, it is as if one should 
 object to the statement that a crime was the effect 
 of an evil purpose, because it was also of necessity 
 the eifect of muscular energy, or the corrosive 
 properties of an alkali. 
 
 IV. The conjecture of human origins, the 
 enlarged perception of the reign of law in human 
 IV. The life, the novel investigations of the 
 o^sden^fic physics of psychology, these are three 
 IpHtulTap" disturbing elements of scientific teach- 
 preciation. \^g ^j^-]^ regard to our own nature, and 
 for the moment hostile to the claim of spirit. I 
 pass to another reason why there is in physical 
 study, at any rate while the studies are new, a 
 tendency towards disparagement of spiritual facts. 
 It is a matter on which, perhaps, we might well 
 have spent the whole time this afternoon ; for it 
 is very interesting and very little examined. 
 
 And first, it is certainly worth remark that the 
 studies which are technically called physics and 
 mechanics, which are controlled by mathematics 
 and examine by means of numbers the behaviour of 
 masses and molecules — do not have this character. 
 It is a fact that most great physicists — at least 
 a very large number of great physicists — have 
 been at the same time eminent Christians. 
 
 There does not seem to be in that range of 
 study any natural tendency to obliterate or to
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURP: 209 
 
 confuse spiritual apprehensions ; but there does 
 seem to be some such tendency in abstract biological 
 studies. The tendency is not evident in biologi- 
 cal studies when they are active, when they are 
 practical, when they have regard to medicine or 
 to public health. They do not then seem to have 
 any particular effect upon the opinions which men 
 hold on other subjects. But biological studies in 
 the abstract do seem to have in some measure 
 this tendency. I must reserve for another time 
 what I think to be the most important cause con- 
 tributing to this result in the particular case of 
 biology. It seems hardly sufficiently explained 
 by the operation of selective attention. But this 
 operation deserves notice here, since it has lately 
 received much study from psychologists ; and we 
 may recognize its effect in the case of biological 
 studies, though we cannot determine why the 
 effect should be especially great in that case. 
 
 We know ourselves very partially and very 
 dimly, and we think that we attend moderately 
 well to all the objects and affairs which selective 
 come before us. In point of fact our attention, 
 attention is strictly confined, and very highly 
 selective. Something of this truth may be seen in a 
 physical image, in the action of the sense of sight. 
 A man might naturally say, for example, that he 
 saw the whole of this building quite plainly. But 
 the fact, I suppose, is that we see one very small
 
 210 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 portion of the field clearly, that portion of which 
 at a given moment the image is thrown upon the 
 yellow spot of the retina ; and that as soon as the 
 eye moves ever so little so that this image no 
 longer falls upon the yellow spot, that object is 
 seen only quite dimly. Thus, there is only one 
 small circular area in the whole scene which one 
 sees with anything like definition, and of the rest 
 there is a mere blurred image. But this is not 
 the impression we carry away with us. For the 
 eye continually moves ; and in this way we have 
 from one side to the other of the room a range of 
 clear images formed in succession, but which we 
 carry with us in a kind of brief memory. And 
 accordingly, although at any one moment one has 
 a strictly definite vision of only one particular 
 point, yet when the whole scene is changed for 
 another scene, the natural statement and the 
 natural impression is that we saw the whole of the 
 first in one experience of sight. The artist, if he 
 is to convince us by the representation of a scene, 
 is obliged to show a considerable range in con- 
 siderable definition. If he placed upon canvas the 
 record which our eye really receives by looking 
 steadily at any particular scene, his picture may 
 come to be disrespectfully described, as some 
 valuable impressionist pictures have been, as " a 
 spot of painting and a lot of fudge." But such a 
 canvas corresponds in a certain true sense to
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 211 
 
 what the eye really receives. The painter in 
 order to fit our notion of what we see, has 
 to represent a great space seen in clearness all 
 over its extent ; of course with gradations of 
 clearness, but with very much more clearness than 
 the eye ever enjoys in any one experience. I 
 believe that an architect could tell something of 
 the extraordinary difficulty of drawing an interior 
 which shall be convincing to the layman or the 
 client. An interior drawn in strict perspective, as 
 if from an actual and single point of view would 
 suggest to the untrained eye and mind a roof 
 leaning far upon one side. The convincing repre- 
 sentation which recalls such a building as the client 
 hopes to see, is made, I have heard, by combining 
 portions as they would be actually viewed from 
 several points, into a whole which is a kind of 
 compromise. 
 
 This may illustrate the way in which we over- 
 rate the quality of our apprehension, and over- 
 estimate its range. Something of the as we can- 
 same sort happens with regard to what "orrecuf.we 
 we call our view of life, our Weltan- {^rserJSe 
 skht. But in life at large we have no attention in 
 
 D our view ot 
 
 such ready means of correction and ''^^■ 
 combination as we have In the narrow and par- 
 ticular experience of physical vision. We are not 
 able, for a judgement of life's meaning or of life's 
 aspect, to change almost instantaneously our
 
 212 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 point of view ; for the mental standpoint is fixed 
 by a long preparation, and is not easily changed. 
 Nor have we anything nearly approaching to the 
 instinctive machinery by which, in the visual 
 sense-experience, successive images are knit into 
 a whole. Mentally, we have the same false 
 impression as we have in sight, the impression of 
 a wide range of simultaneous clearness. But we 
 have not, at least in anything like an equal 
 degree, the same means of keeping such an 
 impression close to the facts by successive views, 
 or by binocular vision. His was a rare gift who 
 " saw life steadily and saw it whole." 
 
 Yet we are not slow to claim this choice fruit 
 of long experience, of sure intuition. We fall 
 easily under the conviction that the whole scene 
 and all the rival explanations of its significance are 
 before us for judgement and for choice. But in 
 fact, just as in physical sight, the eye sees really 
 — that is clearly — but one spot, so in any par- 
 ticular walk of our life we see but one class of 
 facts clearly and really, and the rest of facts, 
 though we think we do them justice, although we 
 have the impression of judging life in a thoroughly 
 impartial and enlightened way, have sunk into 
 dimness. How hard it is to remember this 
 limitation with regard to our special pursuits. 
 For my own part 1 can bear witness that the 
 special pursuits of biology, at any rate when they
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 213 
 
 are fresh, when they come upon the young and 
 forming mind, have a tendency to exclude almost 
 entirely from direct and definite thought most of 
 the other measures by which men and life can be 
 judged. 
 
 You must remember the extraordinary fascina- 
 tion of the study. You must remember its ex- 
 hausting and exacting discipline. And jhe absorb- 
 further, the study is very new, unlike rafte?o"f 
 anything that we have been prepared biology. 
 for at school ; it offers teaching which is otten 
 totally unlike our general notion of nature as we 
 had it from childhood. Biology is full of surprises, 
 of paradoxes, of fresh constructions of idea from 
 the foundations. The new work absorbs the 
 attention to the exclusion of almost every other 
 consideration ; and the student wakes up to find 
 that he has been thinking of man as one of the 
 Primates, as one of the Mammalia, as one of the 
 Vertebrates^ as immensely distinguished in his 
 early ancestry by the possession of a notochord, 
 and as differentiated from his nearest congeners 
 very largely by the happy absence of a fully 
 opposable hallux. 
 
 These characters take of necessity an impor- 
 tant place in his mind. He knows a great deal of 
 the sutures and foramina of the brain-case, of the 
 arrangement of the facial bones, of the angles of 
 the si<.ull. He has considered the deleterious
 
 214 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 effects of adopting the erect posture so ill-suited 
 to some features of our anatomy. And all this 
 excludes from his notions, I will not say great and 
 high things, the notion of poetry, the thoughts 
 which come to us by inspiration ; it excludes for 
 a time all appreciation of the other great sciences 
 which are being pursued within a stone's throw 
 of the building in which he works. Indeed a 
 moment comes when science may be said to have 
 hidden nature.^ This absorption may become 
 very nearly complete. I remember the case of a 
 man shocked out of that position of fixed attention 
 to these facts — by what .'' Not by a great and 
 inspired drama, or by a story of human passion 
 and tenderness and courage, but by an article on 
 Banking which struck him at once as being quite 
 outside the kind of knowledge he had been 
 accustomed to consider." 
 
 1 " Ceux qui passent toutc leur vie ii retudc des coquillages, disent 
 (ju'ils contemplent la nature. O demencc aveuglc ! '' — *De Vauvc- 
 nargucs, Discours Preliminaire,^ printed in the first edition only of 
 his works. 
 
 There are some students of science so much lovers of nature that 
 they are aware of the possible error and guard against it. " I love 
 nature and I hate science," was said to me twenty years ago by a 
 very distinguished zoologist, who in the interval has so served science 
 as to bring nature nearer to us. 
 
 ^ I think this tendency of a special study to fix and limit the 
 mental range (somewhat as a man's head used to be fixed in the 
 photographer's studio) is stronger if the student is allowed to devote 
 himself to any science without a preliminary expatiation in the arts. 
 The 'arts ' course, introducing men to a number of different modes 
 of thought, all made respectable by accomplished utterance, perhaps
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 215 
 
 There is, then, an immense force in selective 
 attention ; and men must be ready, if they are 
 following studies connected with the material side 
 of their being, perpetually to allow for their 
 inevitable effect of seclusion. For this effect 
 will be stronger in special studies than in studies 
 more general, and it will be strongest of all in 
 those studies in which we have few comrades. 
 
 If we study politics we must meet with other 
 men of all kinds who are studying politics from 
 other points of view, and who bring their percep- 
 tions into the general stock. But if we gain 
 entrance to the high and great schools of natural 
 inquiry, so absorbing, so zealous, so jealous of inter- 
 ference, so wonderful in success, so miraculously 
 practical in effect as compared, for example, with 
 our fumbling experiments in social reform ; then 
 
 by itself tends to excessive tlevelopement of the liberal and critical 
 faculties. Under this training the man learns to question every- 
 thing, and to hold himself free to believe anything. Such an 
 influence as this is, however, very wisely combined with the influence 
 of science, for this last tends by itself to paralyse the native faculties 
 of criticism, and to make men slaves to the recent orthodoxy of an 
 intellectual school which still has some of the intolerance of youth. 
 Laud, wondering (in a letter to the Bishop of Winchester) " why so 
 many good scholars came from Winchester to New College, and 
 yet so few of them afterwards prove eminent men," thinks it is 
 because the probationary " two years, and some years after, are not 
 allowed to logic, philosophy, mathematics, and the like grounds of 
 learning," instead of being devoted at once to Calvin's Institutes. 
 This, he said, "ilotii too much possess their jvidgements before they 
 are able to judge." — (Hook's Archbishops of Canterbury, vol. vi. 
 p. 273-)
 
 2i6 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 we must remember, and we must resist, the great 
 pressure of a profound and selective attention 
 which victoriously absorbs all the powers of the 
 mind in one aspect of things, and for the time 
 leaves, so to speak, no sensitive surface unexhausted 
 and ready to respond to any other stimulus. 
 
 You know the behaviour of the eye. Set the 
 eye over against a bright surface and it becomes 
 after a time deadened. It has no sensitive element 
 left ready to vibrate to fresh rays. This exhaustion 
 may, of course, be only partial ; may affect only 
 some elements of the sensitive tissue. Set the 
 eye not against a bright white light, but against 
 rays of a particular measure ; as, for instance, those 
 which give rise to the sensation of red. If you 
 look long enough, all those elements in the retina 
 which vibrate to red are fatigued. They have 
 finished their little stir, and can stir no more for 
 the time. Consequently if the eye is now newly 
 set against a white surface, it brings to you only 
 the message of green, this being the colour which 
 sets in activity those sensitive elements which have 
 not answered to and so have not been exhausted 
 by the red light. 
 
 There are cases, then, in which the mind turns 
 with refreshment to new subjects ; but the image 
 more fit for our purpose, and of more general 
 application, is that of a reception of light by which 
 the whole retina is for the time exhausted. In
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 217 
 
 some such manner the mind long closely set upon 
 the spectacle presented by science loses its answer- 
 ing, its receptive power. Fresh objects find it 
 dulled : and it is able to trace its way only through 
 what is familiar and requires no direct apprehen- 
 sion. The reading man, no longer shot or angler, 
 can still, and half by habit, read the accustomed 
 page. But for fresh discoveries his eyes lack 
 force and keenness. 
 
 Some of us find ourselves dull and insensitive 
 to spiritual impressions. Along the accustomed 
 track, given rest, we find our way by a habit 
 which survives joy. But there is an inflexibility, 
 a want of elasticity for more distant views. Our 
 complaint is not of any difficulty in religion. We 
 have nothing to object to there, for we have nothing 
 to experience. We do not know how to begin 
 to think about it even in criticism. Let us re- 
 member that we have the same inability with 
 regard to many particular pursuits outside our 
 special sphere of interest. But the absorption in 
 material things as such is more universal and 
 more dangerous. . . . 
 
 I acknowledge a hope that we shall less 
 steadily than for some time past illustrate this 
 familiar truth by the example of charies 
 Darwin's failing interest in poetry. ^'"W"- 
 Too much has been made of this. Darwin 
 was one of the simplest, sweetest, gentlest, most
 
 2i8 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 alive of all beautiful old men. His was a large 
 nature of special powers, and with a singular fresh- 
 ness. Inquiries which exhaust most men do not 
 exhaust the Titan. This man was great enough 
 and wise enough, patient and humble enough, 
 to give himself in a very whole-hearted way to 
 his wonderful studies of some of the humblest 
 parts of nature, and at the same time to keep 
 his heart as fresh and tender as a child's, quick 
 to respond to friendship and to love, and awake, 
 as one of his letters to Romanes shows, awake up 
 to the end to the great mystery of existence. It 
 was he who said to Romanes that when a man 
 attempts to judge of the great possibilities of the 
 spiritual life — I am not repeating his exact words 
 — by our little measures of logic, he is like one 
 who should hold up a chamber-candle to light 
 and search the sky above his head. That kindly 
 frankness in which he confided the fact that he 
 was not free from this general law of exclusive 
 attention, of exhausted or inflexible apprehension, 
 has, I think, been used so as to throw out of 
 proportion our own apprehension, our own im- 
 pression, of a great nature. But the truth itself, 
 of which he afforded a measured instance, is of 
 general application and of importance to every 
 man who would use to the best effect the powers 
 which he has received, and by which he is to 
 know the world, to know himself and God.
 
 BIOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE 219 
 
 As belonging to the general subject of the 
 effect of Natural Science upon our thoughts of 
 human nature, I have proposed these four topics : 
 the biological doctrine of our origin ; the exten- 
 sion in thought of the reign of law to man ; the 
 contributions of physiology to the study of mind ; 
 the tendency of biology to diminish our personal 
 appreciation of spiritual facts. In all four cases 
 there is matter for serious study, and for prudent 
 management, but nothing which should rob us of 
 couraa^e either for faith or for science.
 
 IX 
 
 SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE AND 
 DOGMATIC RELIGION 
 
 The title corrected — Two contrasted schools of religious thought — 
 The work of the new generation is to reduce these divergences 
 — Distribution of inquiry — Argument and experience — A 
 function of argument : to make room for experience — A par- 
 ticular delusion affects a man's general intelligence 5 — and it 
 affects his social usefidness — Christian faith has raised the power 
 of intelligence in individuals and societies, — and it has raised 
 the power of common action — It is through Christ and the 
 fact of His Church that the soul is hound to the Positive con- 
 tent of the Creed — Non-Christian faith and goodness — The 
 influence of the Church on those outside it — The present 
 address merely suggestive — Envoy. 
 
 "The witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life 
 is in His Son. — i John v. ii. (R.V.). 
 
 The witness or evidence consists in the fact that 
 we have received from God the present gift of 
 eternal life ; and in the accompanying fact that 
 this life belongs to Christ and is in Christ. The 
 man who knows that he has passed from death 
 unto life, knows also, and with corresponding 
 certainty, that he possesses the new life not by 
 himself or for himself, but in so fir as Christ
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 221 
 
 Is in him and he in Christ. It is not the rein- 
 forcement of his own old life but the translation 
 of his being into the life of another, "I live, yet 
 not I but Christ." 
 
 This twofold experience is the witness or 
 evidence, or, in earlier and still legal English, 
 "the record." By this we know that we have 
 not followed cunningly devised fables. 
 
 By the terms of the notice-paper, and not 
 altogether by my own initiative, I stand to-day 
 committed to a discussion of the contrasts and 
 connexions between Natural Religion and Revela- 
 tion. 
 
 A few words, I hope, will be sufficient to ex- 
 plain both why the terms of this title must be 
 changed, and why it is desirable to conclude our 
 course with some kind of consideration of the 
 great subject which is intended. 
 
 To take the last-named question first, certainly 
 there are motives in abundance to restrain a man 
 from adding to notes upon natural science, a brief 
 mention of the great questions of religion itself. 
 Nothing like a sketch, in however slight an out- 
 line, can be provided even of one's own conception
 
 222 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 of these high matters, and they might well, on 
 many grounds, be set entirely apart and reserved 
 for other opportunities, and indeed for other 
 speakers. 
 
 But there are reasons for another course, 
 however inconvenient it may be. It would 
 be mischievous, by complete silence, to suggest 
 to any believer the idea that the high interests 
 of his faith can be really separated from any 
 inquiry, however humble and departmental, or, 
 on the other hand, that any religious inquiry 
 concerning science can be isolated from those 
 greater interests. 
 
 What can we do ? We cannot give any 
 sketch of an adequate treatment, but we can once 
 more say that such a treatment is to be desired, 
 and we can point in the direction of it — the 
 direction along which an inquirer must adventure 
 who desires to pass from such subjects as have 
 occupied us, to the eventful fields of theology 
 itself. For indeed it is not the avenues of 
 doubt which are most full of possibility and 
 activity. The man who passes from these to the 
 questions which lie within the range of faith will 
 find that he has passed into a fuller and a more 
 exacting occupation of all his powers. 
 
 Of this general necessity for some word of 
 suggestion, 1 had lately a particular signal. 
 
 In one of the earlier addresses in Lent, we
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 223 
 
 agreed, you may remember, to appeal from argu- 
 ment to the experience of human souls ; and we 
 pointed to the believing state as a fact which must 
 be accounted for like any other. It is indeed 
 this appeal to experience which marks the scientific 
 temper in religion. 
 
 This plea produced an interesting sermon 
 which was sent to me by the kindness of the 
 preacher, a distinguished man who has maintained 
 for many years a ministry to souls upon a theistic 
 basis, I mean Mr. Voysey. He seeks to popularize 
 a religion founded upon facts about which every- 
 body is agreed ; and his sermon was an interesting 
 and devout one welcoming our appeal to the facts 
 of spiritual experience. Its title was " Prayer as 
 a support of Faith," and its object was to reinforce 
 any plea for reliance upon the inward witness, 
 but at the same time to urge that the Christian 
 experience, or rather the experience of Commu- 
 nion with God, has no essential connection with 
 Christian dogma. 
 
 This I need hardly say is not an account of 
 the matter which we can accept. We have found 
 that the victory which overcometh the world is 
 our faith, the faith that Jesus is the Son of God. 
 
 At that time, therefore, I thought it would be 
 right to take an early opportunity of suggesting 
 some thoughts on the connexion between thestf 
 two parts of religion.
 
 224 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 But I did not phrase my title rightly, and I 
 wish now to amend it. For what we ought to 
 The title Consider is not so much the connexion 
 corrected, between natural religion and revealed 
 religion, as the connexion between inward experi- 
 mental religion and dogmatic or historical creeds, 
 and organized systems of worship. The ambiguity 
 which I fell into, though natural enough, was 
 mischievous ; because the very contention I had 
 in view was the contention that the inward 
 experimental religion, the knowledge of com- 
 munion with God, is not connected with revealed 
 religion, but is a part of natural religion. There- 
 fore, we must not accept this identification of 
 spirituality with natural religion, but must rather 
 ask the question. What is the nature of the 
 connexion between these inwardly possessed 
 experiences of communion and of kinship with 
 God, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the 
 dogmatic statements of creeds, and the organized 
 efforts of what we usually call religions ? 
 
 Now, it Is plain that any attempt out of one's 
 knowledge to enumerate or to describe the links 
 which constitute that bond would be doomed to 
 failure. The utmost that one can hope for is to 
 indicate something of the general nature of the 
 transition in question. And it is impossible to 
 do more, not only because of the magnitude of the 
 work, but also because it is a work which has not
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 225 
 
 yet in any very large degree been undertaken, at 
 least in such a way as to show the results of the 
 attempt as a whole. In one sense, no doubt, it is 
 the perpetual occupation of all Christian religious 
 thought, but on this very account it would be 
 impossible to summarize it. In another sense it 
 constitutes a task in theology which, if I may 
 venture an opinion, is the special and characteristic 
 and freshly proposed task for devout thought in 
 the ape upon which we are just entering:. ^ 
 
 or J & Two con- 
 
 We find ourselves now in presence of two trasted 
 
 . r 1- • schools of 
 
 strong and distinct currents or religious reUgious 
 thought. Of these one lays almost ex- 
 clusive stress upon the inward private experiences 
 of the believing soul ; and shows a tendency, not 
 only to disregard or forget the historical environ- 
 ment in which this believing state is imbedded, 
 but also to make it a positive point of theology to 
 describe as insignificant and almost worthless those 
 very ' external ' facts which we should rather 
 desire to show in relation with the personal realities 
 of Christian life. For example, the theology of 
 Harnack, which is considered, and, from a certain 
 point of view, justly considered, to be by far the 
 most important intellectual and spiritual force in 
 Germany at the present time, and which bids fair, 
 as we are told, to create a religious movement 
 there and possibly a religious body, has for its 
 positive teaching that the inward treasure of the 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 heart and confidence in God ought to be stripped 
 of all historical and dogmatic conditions, and, 
 above all, should be relieved of all elaborations 
 of organisation and government. The Church is 
 to Harnack not only something unnecessary, but 
 something mischievous, something which interrupts 
 and confuses the witness of the soul to God. 
 
 On the other hand, there is an historical and 
 dogmatic school of Christian thinkers who, I will 
 not say lay exclusive stress upon the large and 
 corporate aspect of Christian life, but who would 
 be prepared to gather together men whose inward 
 convictions were widely different in respect of 
 matters which are almost of the essence of faith, 
 if only the great political structure of the Western 
 Church could be left untouched. Is it not fair to 
 say that these are the two important and extremely 
 contrasted lines of religious thought in the 
 presence of which we actually find ourselves ? 
 And is it not the very work of all devout Christian 
 thought to seek to discover the correlation 
 between the two parts of reality which are 
 segregated by these schools ; to show how the 
 historical structure of the Church, in so far as it is 
 legitimate and really comes to us by authentic 
 descent from the dispositions made by Christ's 
 will, finds its expression and fulfilment in the 
 inward history of the soul. That is the very 
 work of theology. And this it is which the men
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 227 
 
 who are now entering upon the life of thought 
 have before them for their principal occupation 
 through the whole of their lifetimes. 
 
 If this is true, if the work is really the special 
 and new work of the age, it would plainly be 
 wrong to offer any hasty sketch of the The work of 
 nature which I imagine ought to belong ^'^gngr^^jon 
 to such a process of co-ordination. All is to reduce 
 
 r these diver- 
 
 that we can try to do is to show the fences, 
 general character, and perhaps some one particular 
 aspect, of the transition which actually takes place, 
 of the connexion which actually exists in Christian 
 minds, between that unchallengeable experience of 
 kinship with God and the loudly challenged, though 
 equally indispensable, foundations of Christian 
 history and dogma, and of Christian organized 
 life. To pass from that dim — so some people 
 would call it — or, at any rate, general and neces- 
 sarily secret and inexpressible sense of belonging 
 to God, to all the explicit elaboration of dogma 
 and discipline, that is the difficulty, is it not ? 
 And we can only show in a very bald way the 
 kind of path which such an inquiry must take. 
 Even if we obtained from our previous discus- 
 sions, or rather, even if in them we found that we 
 already possessed, something like a conviction of 
 the truth of the presence and love of God, we 
 should still be a very long way from positive 
 religion as it actually confronts us.
 
 228 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 Yet there is encouragement in the hiatus 
 itself ; for it is something to distribute the inquiry, 
 Distribution ^o have acquired some perception of its 
 of inquiry, departments and necessary steps, even 
 if no one of the departments is at present ex- 
 plored. This advantage of distribution deserves 
 notice for a few moments. For my own part, 
 if, in the course of these conferences, I have 
 learned nothing else, I have learned that perhaps 
 the principal difficulty in the way of an under- 
 standing with those who, in the common phrase, 
 do not believe, arises from no malice, from no ill- 
 will, nor from any profound ignorance on either 
 side, excepting that ignorance which we all share. 
 It arises from lack of order in procedure. We are 
 apt to take the whole subject in dispute in a mass 
 without distinction of parts ; and then to present it 
 to our opponents by precisely that aspect of it 
 which they can least easily manage. For example, 
 in many men who would call themselves Agnostics 
 or Materialists, there exists this state of mind : 
 they desire to believe ; they regard religion as a 
 great mixed whole containing a general belief in 
 God, but containing also a multitude of particular 
 statements about the ancient history of the Jews, 
 and carrying with it a great many practices and 
 ways, some of which we hold to be essential, and 
 some of which we should all of us hold to be 
 unessential and merely convenient. All this mass
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 229 
 
 of material comes together for acceptance ; and the 
 inquirer, with perfect goodwill, takes the Bible as 
 that by which Christians propose to recommend 
 the whole scheme. Endeavouring, as it were, to 
 introduce the thick end of the wedge first, he 
 examines the Scripture, as if it were designed to 
 impose upon him a belief in God by the authority 
 of revelation. Now this method illustrates what 
 I have said of the need of distribution. Neither 
 the Bible, nor any revelation could impose upon 
 anybody, or even recommend to anybody, a belief 
 in God. It must always appeal to an existing belief 
 in God. The Bible opens with the word — to 
 speak by rule it has for its second word — that 
 which is translated " God," Eiohim. You must 
 have God, something to match that word Eiohim, 
 before you can construe the first sentence of 
 Genesis. You do not believe that there is a God 
 because the Bible says so. On the contrary, it is 
 to an already existing, though perhaps vague and 
 unexamined, conviction of the existence of God 
 that the first verse in the revelation makes its 
 appeal. And, in correspondence with this, the 
 person who is striving to pass from unfaith to 
 faith must, in most instances, first examine the 
 grounds of theism, the grounds which exist within 
 himself, for it is only when he has already several 
 convictions within himself concerning God, that he 
 can attribute any meaning to the first words of
 
 230 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 positive religion. In distributing the inquiry, 
 this is the first step of order. 
 
 Further, as we distribute the inquiry, so, also, 
 we must distribute the means at our disposal for 
 investigation. We have more than 
 and expe- One power within us for the investiga- 
 tion in which we conceive ourselves to 
 be employed. What function in this investigation 
 belongs to argument ^ Here a familiar answer 
 must be repeated. Argument, dialectic, discus- 
 sion never produce the enrichment of our know- 
 ledge of facts. It is not their business to furnish 
 our consciousness with fresh convictions. It is 
 worth while to reflect upon this, because although 
 it is so familiar a truth, yet in common practice 
 we perpetually disregard it. You will find men 
 ready to argue for a long time about the hour at 
 which the fast train goes to Oxford. In practice, 
 they do not show themselves acquainted with the 
 truth that argument can never give us positive in- 
 formation with regard to matters of fact. This 
 is always obtained in another way altogether. 
 The only sort of arguments fit to settle matters 
 of fact are the so-called arguments of school- 
 boys which consist in the alternate utterance of 
 confident affirmations, ending with an offer to 
 support one's affirmation, first by a wager, and 
 finally, in extreme cases, by an appeal to force. 
 Such discussions, I admit, do eventually enrich
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 231 
 
 somebody's consciousness with a new fact ; but 
 it is doubtful whether they properly deserve the 
 name of argument. Arguments which properly 
 deserve the name, have for their function to dis- 
 entangle the already existing content of the mind ; 
 they never add to our positive information. No 
 argument in the world could show that the Cam- 
 bridge tap-water possesses radio-active elements 
 which are removed by boiling ; but the conscious- 
 ness of mankind has been enriched with this most 
 surprising fact within the last week, not by a pro- 
 cess of a priori argument, but by a carefully con- 
 ducted system of experiment. It is perfectly 
 true that you might conduct an argument on the 
 question of the validity of these experiments. 
 There might be, there probably will be next week 
 in Nature^ a letter to show that a mistake has 
 been made. That is a proper subject for argu- 
 ment, because here argument could make its 
 appeal to facts known in common and acknow- 
 ledged in common by both parties to the discus- 
 sion. Argument has for function the clearing of 
 a space on ground which has been threatened by 
 merely antecedent objections. Against the critical 
 arguments, advanced against religion in the name 
 of natural science, other arguments may be arrayed ; 
 and if they are strong enough they will avail 
 eventually to make in the mind a clear field and 
 no favour. But upon this clear field, after the
 
 232 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 antecedent prejudices have disappeared, conviction 
 can only arise by the acquisition of positive proofs 
 drawn from the world of spiritual fact. It is of 
 very great importance to conduct such discussions 
 well, because they do a real work of charity ; 
 they make the soul ready to receive whatever 
 A fun f f po^^^'^'^^ proof is available. There is a 
 argument: condition of the soul in which it is so 
 
 to make 
 
 room for entangled by supposed argumentative 
 
 experience. ° •' '^ '^ ^ ° . 
 
 necessities, or by unrounded prejudices 
 concerning real facts, that it is not in a position 
 to read its own direct witness, or to receive those 
 informations which God will bestow upon it. 
 When dialectic has done its work to clear the 
 ground, still religion can only arise by God's own 
 gift in the heart. 
 
 When we speak of God's gift of truth being 
 thus made, we have already made an important 
 statement about the nature and mode of Revela- 
 tion. Revelation is made in man. 
 
 Can we, to-day, find some test or proof of the 
 value and reality of what seems to be revelation 
 in the heart and life of man } I would point to 
 one which it may be not unprofitable for us to 
 consider. 
 
 I think we shall all admit that the form of a 
 man's thoughts and the kind of ideas which he 
 entertains on any one subject if it is sufficiently 
 important, have a grave effect upon the nature
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 233 
 
 of his judgement in other regions. If a man 
 is profoundly mistaken on some important point 
 of fact, it is not likely that his mind ^ tj^uiar 
 will remain the instrument of iudge- delusion af- 
 
 _ •> ^ fects a man s 
 
 ment which it ought to be for his other general in- 
 
 . . . IT telbgence ; 
 
 inquiries. If his mistake is small, or if 
 it is concerned with a small thing, then the effect 
 of his error will be small and inappreciable ; and 
 because he is one of a society of which all the 
 members are in error in something, he will pass 
 among the rest and will find correction in the 
 general wisdom. But if his error is profound 
 and obstinate and has reference to an important 
 subject, it cannot leave him as free as other men 
 to form sane judgements upon the rest of ex- 
 perience. Moreover, a wrong judgement upon 
 an important matter will surely tend — and this 
 will be, perhaps, a more delicate test than the 
 simply intellectual one — to alter and to injure a 
 man's relations with his fellows. It will, in the 
 degree of its importance, render him less fit not 
 only for social intercourse but also for co-operative 
 action. He will be hampered and crippled. 
 Everybody knows the extreme case of a profound 
 delusion with regard to one of the common 
 matters which, to the majority of mankind, appear 
 to admit of one opinion only. If a man is 
 obstinately convinced that he is a vegetable grow- 
 ing in the soil, his judgement upon several
 
 234 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 matters may be in many respects fair and good, 
 but nobody would think of taking it upon delicate, 
 or doubtful, or difficult affairs. We should not 
 be surprised to find him perfectly right on many 
 subjects, but we should not go to him in order 
 to disentangle a perplexed question. 
 
 But what I am much more sure of is that such 
 
 a man, in the proportion in which his delusion 
 
 is real and is important, is unfit for 
 
 and it affects , ... 
 
 his social society, does not mix with other men, can 
 
 li Scf U 1 H £ SS 
 
 not maintain the ordinary interchanges 
 which make up family or national life with com- 
 fort either to himself or to others ; and still less 
 can he be a valuable ally in any common enter- 
 prise requiring organized plans and energetic 
 co-operation. What is true of the case of an 
 extreme delusion is true in this measure or that of 
 all wrong judgements. 
 
 Now, if the Christian faith is a delusion, it is a 
 gigantic delusion indeed ! It is real ; it is im- 
 portant in degree ; and it is important in its 
 subject-matter. To imagine one's self a lily in a 
 garden-bed would be a very trifling mistake com- 
 pared to the mistake which Christians labour under, 
 if they are not right. They are committed to state- 
 ments, to begin with, of the most tremendously 
 fundamental character ; and further they are com- 
 mitted to statements ranging over an immense 
 extent of fact. They have judgements, rules, ideals
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 235 
 
 referring to every relation in life. There is no 
 subject hardly, there is, indeed, no subject at all 
 which has to do with the essence of morals, about 
 which the Christian religion does not provide an 
 answer which, with care, could be made to appear 
 perfectly definite. Christians are possessed of a 
 tremendous armoury of statements ; and here lies 
 precisely the difficulty for our friends who possess 
 in common with us the general conviction of God's 
 presence and God's goodness. If, then, christian 
 this Christian story is a delusion, how raised the 
 seriously it ought to cripple the in- teiUgenceTn 
 telligence in its ordinary operations. a'Ji^^'^"^^^ 
 Surely a man possessed with this false societies, 
 history — supposing it were false — with this pro- 
 foundly false philosophy, with this fundamentally 
 erroneous conception of his relation to God and 
 to the world, ought to be a man whom we should 
 find failing in every department of what we all 
 alike recognize as positive inquiry. We ought to 
 be unable to show in the Church any historians, 
 any scientific workers, any doctors, or even any 
 masters of the law, for these last have to deal 
 with the natural relations between men as they 
 are organized together on a basis of self-interest. 
 We ought indeed to be, as the old critics of 
 Christianity at the beginning said we were, 
 mutterers in corners who have nothing to do 
 with the general work or the general thought of
 
 236 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 mankind, and who are disqualified by their gross 
 and pernicious superstition — I am repeating, as of 
 course you know, classical words of the old critics 
 of the Church — we ought to be disquahfied by our 
 pernicious superstition from all the employments 
 of government, of philosophy, and of research. Is 
 that approximately what we find ? Is that a 
 colourable account of what is learnt from a general 
 view of the history of the Church ; and is it what 
 any one of us finds, when we look at the story of 
 our own lives ? 
 
 To take that lesser example first, have you 
 found it to be the case that your arrival at con- 
 viction, perhaps after many years of doubt and 
 faint-heartedness, has blunted your appetite for 
 study, has clouded your judgement, has made you 
 unable to keep pace with other people of moderate 
 gifts like your own, in whatever work you have 
 chosen to undertake ? In such a case as this 
 every man must speak for himself; and, therefore, 
 1 am obliged to speak for myself, and to say that 
 the moderate powers which I possess for any kind 
 of study have certainly not been checked, hindered, 
 hampered ; have not found in Christian faith 
 any obstacle upon the path in any one branch 
 of human information ; certainly not in biology, 
 certainly not in physics, certainly in nothing else 
 to which one has given even a measure of diligence. 
 It is absolutely certain on examination of ourselves
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 237 
 
 that our belief or conversion has not hampered, 
 has not crippled, has not dimmed, or clouded, or 
 rendered less alert, such powers of general observa- 
 tion as we have, such powers of arranging know- 
 ledge, such powers of expressing the result of our 
 thought. And if we pass from these humblest 
 examples within our own breasts to a general view 
 of the Church, what do we find ? 
 
 We find, indeed, here and there, at a particular 
 point of time, or in a particular quarter, great 
 official leaders of Church thought throwing them- 
 selves in vain against the progress of this or that 
 science. We all remember — who has ever a chance 
 of forgetting ? — the case of Galileo. What a pity- 
 it is they did not make Galileo a cardinal, and then 
 the whole story would have read in the opposite 
 sense. There are, of course, higher degrees of 
 rank in the Christian world which do not always 
 coincide with the most special presence of light 
 and power ; but, taking the history as a whole, 
 what do you find t Was the old prophecy of 
 the early critics, was Lucian's account of the 
 Church right, or Aristides' account ^ Which was 
 the wiser man, Augustine or the most eminent 
 Manichaean ? Which was the more enlightened, 
 would you say, Ambrose or the leader of those 
 who wished to keep up the altar of Victory in the 
 Forum ? Have they been, in point of fact — 
 these believing men — crippled, hampered, purblind ?
 
 238 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 Has Christian science been backward science ; has 
 Christian philosophy been retrograde philosophy ? 
 Gentlemen, there is no philosophy in the world 
 now which is not by descent Christian philosophy/ 
 The doctrines of Kant and Hegel are derived 
 historically from the Christian thought of the 
 Middle Ages. Was Anselm stupid ? Who was 
 the backward thinker, Anselm or the man who 
 
 ' It is not to be forgotten that the form and method of our 
 dialectic, and the very categories of our philosophy, come to us, 
 without break, from the Greece and Rome in which the modern 
 world began and continued, or rather in which the first triumphant 
 impetus was gained by that movement which was to meet from the 
 forgotten East the influence which made it our world. 
 
 But this Greek philosophy, which was to be revived in Europe 
 in the fifteenth century, escaped extinction in the interval because its 
 greatest works were preserved by the Church. 
 
 The thread of intellectual continuity which ran from the classic 
 past through the moral and spiritual revolution of the Gospel, was 
 guarded in the dark age within monastery walls. 
 
 As to the spirit and tendency of our philosophy, the terms of 
 dualism (substance and accident, spirit and matter) come from 
 Greece. But the conciliation of these contrasted terms, their inclu- 
 sion in a wider unity, which gives them their value for us, is an 
 effect from the Hebrew world which did not feel the need of 
 synthesis because it had never lost the confidence of its spiritually- 
 actual monism. Hegel's recognition of the ideal significance of the 
 actual is Hebrew and Christian ; and so are all the philosophies 
 which find the unity of the universe in nx)Ul. 
 
 On the intellectual continuity of the modern world of logic from 
 B.C. 4.50 to our day, and on the spiritual control obtained at the 
 Gospel era by the faith of the Incarnation over an intellectual move- 
 ment already strong in the victories of five hundred years, I hope 
 that we may be able to refer by printed page and chapter to a great 
 sermon preached by Canon Holland before the University of Oxford, 
 June 25, 1905.
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 239 
 
 in controversy with Anselm took the title of 
 the Fool ? It is unnecessary to elaborate the 
 question. It is plain that the history of our 
 present civilization is the history of Christianity. 
 It is perfectly plain that the leaders of faith have 
 been the leaders of knowledge also. We cannot 
 reverse that judgement because of an instance 
 here and there of an eminent man who has 
 slipped out of the current of faith. The thing, 
 judged as a whole, admits of but one judgement ; ^ 
 and if we turn from the history of thought to the 
 history of social effort we shall be driven to a 
 parallel conclusion, that Christian faith , . . 
 IS SO far trom having hampered and raised the 
 
 1 J 1 • 1 • r power of 
 
 crippled the practical intercourse or men common 
 with one another that it has proved to 
 be the one thing which can bind them together 
 in a thoroughly operative society. '^ 
 
 It is true that long before our time, before 
 the time of Christ, great societies existed which 
 
 1 When these words were spoken, I had not read for many years 
 Newman's magnificent last University Sermon. Let me make of 
 this an occasion to beg others to read it again, to refresh their 
 memory of that great argument in which he shows how " the Cross 
 has enlisted under its banner all those great endowments of mind 
 which in former times had been expended on vanities, or dissipated 
 in doubt and speculation." 
 
 * In so far as our modern society fails to be co-operative tor the 
 best interests of all and each, in so far, that is to say, as it is talst- to 
 its name " society," no one will allege that the failure is due to the 
 excessive influence of principles characteristically Christian.
 
 240 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 did much for men. But nobody who judges 
 the facts impartially, I make bold to say, would 
 contend that even the great empire of Rome, 
 with its large extent of equality, with its world- 
 wide justice, was a system which could compare 
 for a single moment with Christian free civili- 
 zation, when that civilization has been true to 
 its own principles. And if, reversing our former 
 process, we now come back to the individual case, 
 what will you say about your own life ? Has the 
 emergence of faith in you, has the victory of 
 prayer, has religious security put you apart from 
 your fellows, made you unsocial, made it more 
 difficult for you to act with others, made you 
 ineffective ? Has it not rather liberated every 
 useful quality that you had, and brought it into 
 the general market of human effort ? Time forbids 
 me to enlarge upon this question, but I leave it 
 with you for consideration. And I can leave it 
 with you the more readily because I am perfectly 
 confident what the nature of your answer must be 
 on a general view of the facts. 
 
 Armed in anticipation with that reply, I return 
 to our original statement that the contents of 
 positive religion, if they do not indeed represent 
 the very truth, constitute so monstrous a delusion 
 that they ought not merely to have hampered a 
 man in his thought or to have set up barriers 
 between him and his neighbour, but they ought
 
 experiencp: and dogma 241 
 
 to have paralysed human thought and totally 
 disorganized human life. Some would say that 
 this is the effect, or would be if belief were sincere 
 and obeyed. Appeal must be to the facts ; and 
 since the faith is nowhere perfectly held or entirely 
 rejected, the facts must teach by the method of 
 concomitant variation. 
 
 So much, then, about a suggested test of the 
 value of what we know as positive religion. It 
 is a very strong test, a very important one. I need 
 hardly add that it is only one among many ; and I 
 have chosen to dwell upon it not as a feature in a 
 general sketch of Christian evidences — for that I 
 do not make the least attempt to provide — but as 
 a test often forgotten, and which may profitably 
 receive your attention on this particular afternoon. 
 
 Now for one word of contribution towards the 
 study of the nature of the connexion between 
 faith and dogma. The explanation can ,,. ,, 
 
 , J . It IS through 
 
 only be approached by assuminp- pro- Christ and 
 
 ^ or j.jjg i2^QX of 
 
 visionally the faith of which we speak. His Church 
 
 -J,,. . , . . ^ , ,. that the soul 
 
 We gain the conviction or the reality is bound to 
 of the whole circle of religious state- cont^enTor 
 ments only through Christ. No reli- 
 gious consciousness bears witness immediately and 
 primarily to all the statements which constitute 
 the fabric of the Christian Creed. If a man says, 
 " I am sure, by my own inward knowledge, that 
 this and this and this is true," you are not to 
 
 R
 
 242 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 suppose that he is speaking without justification ; 
 but he is giving you elliptically the result of an 
 experience by which he has scaled the steps. A 
 man may think that he has an inward verification 
 of the propriety of a definite ceremonial practice, 
 but he has, in fact, arrived at it by a process of 
 inference from certain facts about which he really 
 possesses an immediate conviction. That is to 
 say, he infers it from the right of Christ to 
 organize his religious life ; and it comes down 
 to him, this true judgement, through a long 
 series of historical steps in the evolution of the 
 Church. What a man really has is confidence 
 in Christ ; and he has confidence in Christ in 
 this particular form, that he has found that 
 through Christ he came to be sure of the reality 
 and the nearness of God ; that in Christ he 
 gains a conviction to which all other experience 
 provided only an approximation. He was always 
 yearning after it, feeling towards it, hoping it might 
 at last prove itself. And it proves itself in Christ. 
 He looks at the great scene of Nature ; and 
 he sees that there is nothing in nature which can 
 possibly compare with human nature as the field 
 or matrix of revelation, the place where revelations 
 may be expected. He knows that it is only in 
 his own heart that the conviction can possibly be 
 established ; that if there is a root of communion 
 with God it is a root planted in his own life,
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 243 
 
 and that if there are outward facts which can, as it 
 were, teach his heart how to spring, and point for 
 him the direction in which to aim his venture 
 after the unknown God, these facts must lie in 
 the region of the nature which is Hke his own, 
 in Human Nature. And as he goes further in 
 his study of human nature, he sees, first, that he 
 can by no means exclude from the facts which are 
 to guide his judgement, the great fact o^ goodness ; 
 the nature of good men. And, further, that 
 among these none wholly deserves the title except- 
 ing one, Jesus of Nazareth. In the first place, he 
 will see quite for certain that his whole judgement 
 of existence must hidude Jesus ; and, further, he 
 will see that it is the apex of the series, tht good 
 nature, the perfect nature, which alone really tells 
 the meaning of any mixed constitution. 
 
 Badness — I must not step far into what 
 belongs to another inquiry — badness can always 
 be accounted for as the failure of something else. 
 But of what is goodness the failure .'* It is some- 
 times urged that we might so read the mixed 
 facts of life that they will bear either of two inter- 
 pretations ; either that there is a good God who 
 sometimes lets some bad things slip through, or 
 that there is a bad God who sometimes lets good 
 things slip through. I deny this ; for what is the 
 nature of the ideal of which goodness is the defect ? 
 What is the net, through the mesh of which
 
 244 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 goodness escapes ? What is the mark, the missing 
 of which is goodness ? What is the developement, 
 the breakdown of which is goodness ? It is not 
 the fact that you can state the matter either way, 
 that badness is the failure of a good purpose, or 
 goodness the failure of a bad purpose caught 
 napping. Nobody creates what is good by mis- 
 take in the effort to make what is bad. All of 
 us make what is bad by mistake in the endeavour 
 to make what is good. This goodness is always a 
 positive fact which can never be explained away, 
 and which requires a God to account for it. And 
 so, to resume, our inquirer's view of Nature will not 
 only include Jesus, but he will see that if he cannot 
 account for the goodness which is the character 
 of Christ he has accounted for nothing, and that 
 therefore he might most profitably concentrate his 
 inquiry upon that character. I must not pursue 
 that line further ; but it is along that line that the 
 man so makes his way towards the reality of infinite 
 goodness, that at last he reaches a point where the 
 truth and his conviction, so to speak, come near 
 enough to spark. Christ is Himself indeed that 
 union-point in which human nature is at one with 
 God ; and it is in the contemplation of Him and 
 by sympathy with Him and obedience to Him, 
 and only by belonging to Him, that we can share 
 the content in some measure of His life. As a 
 matter of fact, in history, taking the world as a
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 245 
 
 whole, no men have come to be so certain of 
 the existence and nearness of God as the 
 men who were looking at Jesus, either looking 
 back to Him by history or looking forward to 
 Him in prophecy. You may object to Non-Chris- 
 me the case of Mohammedanism. But gooJ^'ess^"'^ 
 Mohammedanism is nothing but a 
 developed form of such a belief as we are rapidly 
 approaching in this unhappy country, the developed 
 degeneration of a Christianity which denies its 
 own foundations. It is nothing but a degradation 
 of the theism received from Israel and from Christ. 
 And if we turn from this to the general history of 
 the world, where can you find any instance of a 
 nation secure in the conviction of the oneness, of 
 the nearness and operative power, of God excepting 
 those who have looked to Christ, either backward 
 along the tracks of tradition or forward along the 
 almost still more miraculous road of expectation 
 which is the especial glory of all those whose 
 witness we read in the Old Testament '^. The 
 same statement can be made about the individual 
 life. People do not, as a matter of fact, often 
 come to be believers in the one God and then add 
 to it a statement about Jesus Christ. They reach 
 it through Him. 
 
 And this is true of the genesis of their faith, 
 although in the intellectual discussion of that 
 faith, as was said earlier, men must ask themselves
 
 246 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 whether they are Theists before they are qualified 
 to discuss the Theism of Christ. 
 
 So far, in our short hour, we may indicate 
 without developing it, one character of the line of 
 knowledge. It is only possible now to add this 
 further statement ; that the confidence in Christ, 
 the contemplation of Christ only becomes effectual 
 in conviction and operative in virtue when it is 
 held as a whole, when it is in a certain sense 
 completed in its circle. To attempt to take parts 
 of the truth about Christ, to choose this part and 
 to draw the line at some other part, is exactly like 
 attempting to produce a result by electricity with 
 an electrical arrangement in which the circuit is 
 broken. You have your battery, that is, you have 
 the necessary plates and vessels ; you have the 
 acids, you have the wires, but if there is a gap 
 in the circuit the whole contrivance is inopera- 
 tive. Chemical effects do not begin in the cells, 
 the molecular vibrations do not begin in the 
 connecting medium, nothing moves. It is only 
 when the circle is complete, it is only when the 
 end becomes possible that even the beginning is 
 liberated. And so it is with an eclectic view of 
 Christ. It is far from being valueless ; it is very 
 precious because it is on the way to becoming com- 
 plete. But in a certain sense of completeness, it 
 must be complete before its justification appears. 
 It is not without the sense of having reasons in
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 247 
 
 reserve that I shall venture, without ofFering 
 reasons, upon the statement that, on the whole, 
 and taking things at large, it is only when the 
 faith in Christ makes in a sense the full circle, 
 not of completed knowledge, but of ungrudging 
 confidence ; takes, that is to say. His own account 
 of Himself and of His doings to be true, that it 
 becomes an operative faith producing the intimate 
 conviction of our nearness to the Father, and 
 yielding the effective impulse to virtue, courage, 
 and loyalty, to those actions and tempers which, 
 even apart from His name, we knew to be good. 
 
 You say this is a harsh judgement of the many 
 round about us who serve God better in their 
 conduct than we do who call upon the name of 
 Christ. I have not forgotten that. 1 said in 
 general, and on the whole. Faith in Christ has 
 acted in great masses, in bodies ; it has acted in 
 the building up, and in the filling of the con- 
 sciousness of, a society which we can point to, 
 which has come down from the first. There is a 
 Spirit-bearing body reaching through the ages ; 
 and this body, the Church (for which I would 
 make no narrow definition, for I believe, as I 
 have said to you before, that there is no limiting 
 line which we can draw around it, that it is 
 defined by its ever-glowing centre — the Heart of 
 Jesus), this body cannot live and move in the 
 world without creating a moral atmosphere within
 
 248 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 itself and round about itself. It makes its own 
 great tradition of morals ; it makes its own great 
 mass of examples ; it radiates its own great warmth 
 of love. And the men born within the range of 
 this warmth, who are by accident or man's design 
 withdrawn from the actual sharing of its sacra- 
 mental blessings, cannot escape from all the effects 
 of its presence. 
 
 These effects will be abundantly evident 
 
 amongst those so-called non-Christian individuals 
 
 who show forth more plainly than, alas 1 
 
 The in- . ^ . ~,^ . . 
 
 fluenceof we do, the virtues or the Christian state ; 
 on those but they have inherited along with their 
 English blood and their place amongst 
 us, a mass of ideals, a mass of moral preferences, 
 an immense system of training and of correc- 
 tion, a special range of feelings, impulses, in- 
 fluences, gales like gales of spring, water from 
 Heaven itself After all, the world about the 
 Church is such that in many respects it is easier 
 to do well in it than to do ill ; and con- 
 sequently we can point with joy to examples of 
 individual life which seem at first sight to weaken 
 the argument which I have attempted to suggest. 
 But while they seem to weaken it they really 
 strengthen it ; for, by what seems at first sight 
 their independence of the real Christian life, they 
 do but bear witness to the overpowering influence 
 of the corporate Christian conscience ; they do but
 
 EXPERIENCE AND DOGMA 249 
 
 provide further and still more telling evidence of 
 the might with which Christ can fill the lives of 
 men ; the working through which, by simply ruling 
 men's hearts, He is changing the face of the earth 
 and of society. For surely it is true, and almost 
 all men will acknowledge it, that common human 
 life grows better precisely in the proportion in 
 which it genuinely answers to the word and example 
 of Christ. 
 
 It is on such lines as that, it is through the 
 personal link of Christ, it is by finding out what 
 He really said concerning Himself, it -j-he present 
 is by considering the nature of the ^el-d?^ 
 faith which He in fact originated, and suggestive, 
 the conditions of health in the social body which 
 in fact He founded and sustains, that we trace in 
 thought our passage from the sense of God, to the 
 possession of a large circle of experiences, which 
 to those outside appear like a mere accumulation 
 of details ; but which are known to us as the 
 developement, intrinsically single and undivided, 
 of a perfectly simple condition of trust in Jesus 
 Christ, God and Man. ..... 
 
 I am grieved to leave our discussion so seriously 
 incomplete ; but there are particular and positive 
 duties of a given hour, and 1 must, if I am to be 
 true to any sort of conscience, release you without
 
 250 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 further delay. I shall hope that you will not 
 judge the strength of the faith which I most 
 unworthily represent at this moment, and on this 
 spot, by the degree of clearness which I have been 
 able to give to the suggestion of one among its 
 lines of proof. 
 
 It is the consolation of all our work that it is 
 
 not isolated. Small indeed is the work which can 
 
 be completed by small powers in a few 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 short conferences. But that little may, 
 in some measure, be capable of combination 
 with weightier lessons learned in other quarters. 
 It may even be prelude for better work to be done 
 together by us who have met in this place. If there 
 is any grain of good in it, it cannot be lost ; " for 
 there is no waste in the great household " ^ wherein 
 we serve. 
 
 ' " For there is no waste in the great household of the master 
 that lie serves." Words spoken of the man of vocation. Rev. J. R. 
 lUingworth, U/ii'versity and Cathedral Sermons, p. 153, cd. 1893.
 
 X 
 
 THE AIDS WHICH SCIENCE GIVES 
 TO THE RELIGIOUS MIND.^ 
 
 Character of the Subject — What is required for its study — First 
 ' Aid ' of Science : truer ideas about Life — The expectation of 
 finality recedes as knowledge advances — "Sanderson knows" 
 — Second Aid : enrichment of analogy — Third Aid : niany 
 gains from the study of evolution — Important topics briefly 
 enumerated — The last and greatest Aid comes by the deeper 
 knowledge of Law — Law in Life should teach us a new 
 affirmation about Law ; not a new negation about Life — The 
 Lines of Law and Freedom converge — The observed facts of 
 concomitant variation point the direction of a complete recon- 
 ciliation of Law and Will, of Science and Religion. 
 
 I. The subject which has been proposed to us is 
 very welcome to me, and for this reason. We 
 have heard enough for the present of 
 
 Character 
 
 the oppositions between science and of the 
 religion. And further, for the present 
 we have spoken enough in reference to science 
 and religion as if they were two forces moving 
 independently in the air ; two systems, like the 
 tides or the railways, which can be described apart 
 
 ' A paper read hi fori.' the Cluircii Congress at Bristol, 1^03.
 
 252 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 from the consciousness which includes them. The 
 relation between science and religion is a relation 
 in the minds of men ; and the only form of that 
 relation which is worth serious study for its own 
 sake^ or, at least, for its intrinsic value, is that 
 relation which exists in those particular minds, 
 which have real knowledg-e under both heads — 
 
 o 
 
 science and religion. There is, of course, a great 
 deal of real science in heads which have little con- 
 sciousness of religion, and a great deal of real 
 religion in hearts which have no natural science. 
 But the relation between relimon and science can 
 only be studied after this fashion in minds which, 
 to some considerable degree, are influenced by 
 both. The opposition worth reconciling is not the 
 opposition traceable between rival statements which 
 might be set in parallel columns of print, nor the 
 opposition between the scientist and the theologian 
 considered as separate men, but the opposition 
 existing in a good and wise man's mind. And, 
 accordingly, the real synthesis of science and 
 religion is the personal one, the combination of 
 both, which is effected in intelligences at once 
 devout and instructed. And the modus vivendi 
 which has been reached between the two systems 
 (which it is not our business now to analyse), is 
 not simply a logical harmony, but is rather found 
 in the fact that there are some men who are 
 both religious and scientific, and under whatever
 
 AIDS FROM SCIENCE 253 
 
 intellectual strain they may experience, live at 
 peace within themselves. The conciliation, then, 
 which is found in the existence of men of double 
 sympathies, is much more valuable than the pro- 
 duction of a logical harmony which might be 
 available for every man who is able to read and to 
 reason. 
 
 By such a judgement we do not disparage the 
 logical harmony, but assert that it will be founded 
 upon the personal harmony of existing minds ; 
 that the man in whom the two streams of know- 
 ledge, religious and natural, are combined will be 
 able more and more clearly to explain in terms of 
 logic the method by which the forms of truth co- 
 exist within him. I venture, then, to take the 
 title offered to us as meaning the effect of scientific 
 training upon the devout mind. 
 
 II. But while such a study is most desirable, it 
 is not easy to get. Since the synthesis to be 
 observed is personal, the observation 
 of it must be personal too. There is required for 
 abundant material, indeed, for some- ' ^ ^ " ^' 
 thing which would satisfy verbally the require- 
 ments of my version of the text. We see a 
 good deal, and in the past we have seen a 
 great deal more, of the effect upon the religious 
 mind produced by other mens scientific studies ! 
 and an unhappy effect it often is in more respects 
 than one. But this I conceive is not what we are
 
 254 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 intended to talk about to-day. To describe the 
 real thing — the effect of his own scientific training 
 upon a devout man — who can be sufficient but 
 the man who is himself possessed of both terms 
 of our inquiry, the religious mind and the 
 scientific training ? I am very far from making 
 such a claim for myself. I pretend to no more 
 than an eager sympathy with both, and the 
 briefest experience of that one of them which is 
 most easily come by, the technical training ; and 
 that technical training in the department of 
 biology only, in the study of living creatures. 
 
 At present the public interest is not focussed 
 upon biology ; though not only the accumulation 
 of facts, but crucial studies of the greatest 
 theoretical importance are going on there with 
 undiminished energy. I need only refer in 
 passing to the inquiry into zymotic disease and 
 the amoebic origination of malaria, as one instance 
 of many in the biological department. It is in 
 physics that the things are done which strike 
 public attention at this moment. And first in 
 the application ot a new control over vibratory 
 forces — forces in many cases newly distinguished. 
 I mean, of course — in the elaboration of what is 
 known as wireless telegraphy, or the curative 
 application of the Rontgen rays and of electric 
 light. Secondly, in a further investigation of 
 those forces, as for example, in the study of
 
 AIDS FROM SCIENCE 255 
 
 light as itself a phenomenon of electrical inter- 
 ruption ; and, thirdly, in the pursuit pushed on 
 now with fresh ardour, of that ever-distant 
 fugitive, the discovery of what is called the 
 ultimate constitution of matter. The Romanes 
 Lecture of this year by Sir Oliver Lodge 
 will give a definite idea of the extraordinary 
 prosperity of physical science in this and other 
 directions. So far as religion is concerned, it is 
 the attempted completion of the mechanical theory 
 of the universe and not any special doctrine about 
 organic forms which seems to threaten the interests 
 of Theism. In prefacing, therefore, that all I 
 know is a little biology and nothing of physics 
 and mathematics, I put myself out of line as a 
 judge of what we are here to inquire about. I 
 claim only a sympathy with science and with 
 devotion. 
 
 III. The subject is further narrowed by the 
 word " aid," pointing, I suppose, to the obvious 
 advantages and not the apparent disadvantages of 
 scientific training. There are cases in which the 
 apparent disadvantages are finally the greatest aids 
 to the believer ; because they throw faith back 
 upon the discovery of its own laws, the canons 
 of its conduct, the conditions of its prosperity ; 
 because they teach devotion to cultivate the 
 patience and honesty of the methods of physical 
 inquiry ; and because they lead to a recovery of
 
 256 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 that inductive or experimental element which has 
 a place as much in religion as in physics. But we 
 are to look, at any rate to start with, for the more 
 immediate aids, and those not simply from nature 
 but from science. 
 
 The contemplation of Nature , indeed, is always 
 fruitful for the religious mind, or at least for those 
 minds which find joy in the outward scene. 
 Some religious minds there are, as there are some 
 irreligious minds, which find little to attract them 
 in what is before their senses. They are like the 
 maid Anne who travelled with Charles Dickens 
 and his wife in America. " I do not think," 
 writes Dickens, "Anne has so much as seen an 
 American tree. She never looks at a prospect by 
 any chance or displays the smallest emotion at any 
 sight whatever. She objects to Niagara that * it's 
 nothing but water,' and considers that ' there is 
 too much of that.' " ' But to many, perhaps to 
 most religious minds, fields and sea and sky are 
 friends and helpers whenever they are seen. 
 
 The advantages of science do not quite so 
 quickly jump to the eye ; for too often it has 
 happened that science, with its necessarily limited 
 view, with its artificial but perfectly legitimate 
 structures of hypothesis, has had a different effect 
 upon the mind from that which was the proper 
 
 > Letters of Charles Dickens, p. 67. (Ed. Macmillan, 1893) Letter 
 to Austin, May 1, 1842.
 
 AIDS FROM SCIENCE 257 
 
 result of the contemplation of nature as it is. I 
 touch here a subject which is evidently capable of 
 wide developement. Even within science itself, 
 the effect of the direct observation which is its 
 foundation is quite diff*erent from the effect of 
 mere book-learning, much more wholesome than 
 that of an irresponsible study of theory, like that 
 to which some popular publications invite our 
 brothers of the labouring ranks. There is, then, 
 an unfavourable eff^ect of Science which is very real, 
 but which 1 do not at this time stop to analyse. 
 
 IV. Turning, then, to our defined area of 
 observation — to science in the strict sense ; to 
 biological science as being to some extent within 
 my own knowledge ; to the real work of science 
 as distinguished from irresponsible theorizing; 
 and to the conditions which are created by all this 
 in the devout mind itself — what can we choose 
 out of the great list of happy influences for the 
 man of scientific training ? I would put as most 
 immediately important, as most fruitful, (i) t/ie 
 observation of life itself as life. 
 
 There is no material image of spiritual realities 
 nearly so eloquent as the image of organic life. 
 The modern progress of science has First 'Aid' 
 greatly enlarged the significance of this TrJeHdels 
 created image. We see, as men never ^^°^^ ^'^^• 
 saw before, the infinite complexity and delicacy of 
 life. There is the exhibition of perfectly ordered 
 
 s
 
 258 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 form and movement in structures inconceivably 
 minute. We never reach the unit, we never find 
 the raw material out of which tissues, structures, 
 organisms are made. We never find those 
 imagined bricks of uniform size and shape, by 
 the arrangement of which all the varieties of 
 
 o 
 
 living substance might be conceived to be formed. 
 It is true that protoplasm, or proteid material, has 
 a definite and highly complex chemical constitu- 
 tion — complex not only from the relatively large 
 number of elements, but by reason of the relation 
 between them, a relation only to be expressed by 
 the use of high numerals in the molecular formula. 
 But this formula does not express the form in 
 which proteid material actually exists. It gives an 
 account of it according to one particular measure, 
 the measure of chemical analysis, and the re- 
 actions which substances exhibit towards certain 
 tests. But in respect of organic form we have 
 reached no unit. Once the cell was thought to 
 be such a unit, not uniform in size or shape but 
 morphologically equivalent ; now I suppose the 
 chromosomes might a little claim this name. How- 
 ever far we go we find the fulness of complexity, 
 the spontaneity, and the regular process, which are 
 characteristic of life itself. We find no merely 
 mechanical structure, no merely mechanical move- 
 ment out of which vital movements, living struc- 
 tures, are built. The final prize of our research
 
 AIDS FROM SCIENCE 259 
 
 is already living. Formerly, in a more rudi- 
 mentary stage of histology/ we used to speak of 
 certain substances as homogeneous, or structure- 
 less. We now have the best of reasons for 
 knowing that we never reached this structureless 
 basis of the structures that we knew. The Chro- 
 matin of the nucleus is as much alive, and its 
 living movements and history as much call for 
 explanation as did the observable tissues when 
 Schwann pointed to what for a time seemed a 
 unit of morphology — the cell, the equivalent 
 given thing, by the various arrangement ot 
 which various forms of tissues might be sup- 
 posed to be reached. Within our knowledge, 
 there is no such uniform brick ; there is no 
 molecule of organic structure ; there is no one 
 thing, incapable of further analysis, which is the 
 basis of living structure and function. On the 
 contrary, what we find in the most remote prize 
 of examination, is in every case a body evidently 
 complex, evidently differentiate, evidently the 
 result and not only the source of an evolution. 
 To say that we are further than ever from arriving 
 at the unit, is a rough use of language which con- 
 veys, nevertheless, the real truth, that the more 
 we know the more distant that goal evidently 
 appears. We never spy behind the scenes of life, 
 
 ' Histology is the study of tissues anil of the structure of cells 
 by means of the microscope.
 
 26o THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 or surprise the ultimate machinery of its effects. 
 What we find at last is already a fact as fully 
 organized as the outward aspect of life itself, and 
 which bears witness (putting aside all speech of a 
 First Cause), to facts of material life still unknown. 
 Whatever be the meaning of this for controversy 
 — and 1 am, perhaps, less inclined than others to 
 dwell on it in that connection — certainly to the 
 religious mind it is a lesson very impressive, very 
 fit to bring home the mystery of life. Life, where- 
 ever it appears, stands as a mystery in material 
 things, alone and original, accounted for only by 
 other life. I am not for a moment denying, 
 indeed I should be eager to urge, that the other 
 studies which have regard to non-vital phenomena, 
 that chemistry, and physics, both of mass and of 
 molecule, contribute to physiology. The move- 
 ments which physiological study describes have 
 their place among other movements. The changes 
 of chemical composition or of temperature which 
 physiology deals with must be assigned their place 
 among other such changes, by chemistry and 
 physics. And further, there is real advantage 
 when we can reduce the account of vital move- 
 ments to terms of heat, or weight, or transfusion, 
 of resistance to pressure and the like. But all 
 this does not explain ; it does not bring us to the 
 foundation either of life regarded in the abstract 
 as a presence in the world, or of those living
 
 AIDS FROM SCIENCE 261 
 
 substances which form the object of our actual 
 observation.^ 
 
 Moreover, the more knowledge we have of 
 these facts of organic structure and function, the 
 greater is the impression of the unknown 
 
 .... , T1-11- • ^h^ expec- 
 
 which IS made upon us, 1 think this point tation of 
 is one which is worth dwelling upon, cedesas^' 
 The ignorant imagine that the bodily life advancesf^ 
 has no secrets for the doctor ; that we 
 have a shell, a case, and, inside of it, works which 
 are perfectly familiar to those who have been 
 authorized to open the case. There may once 
 have been doctors ignorant enough to think that 
 what is mysterious to them is simple to the phy- 
 siologist ; that a sufficiently accurate, or suffi- 
 ciently prolonged inquiry would make that clear 
 which is essentially obscure. But the more fully 
 trained a man is, just in this proportion he parts 
 with the vision which is so simple for the simple 
 man. Once in an Oxford Common-Room, some 
 one was speaking of an eloquent sermon of Dr. 
 Liddon's, in which our preacher had pointed to 
 the mystery of the connexion between thought 
 
 ' If abiogcnesis, that is, the arising of living substance from that 
 which is not living, were to be observed, the i//j//«(f//o« between living 
 and non-living would not disappear. The transition from one to 
 the other would have appeared. It would be a discovery surpassing 
 almost any other that we could name, but it certainly would not rob 
 us of the wonder of life, or enable us to reduce its character to the 
 terms of non-living matter. We should have become contemporary 
 spectators of the great miracle. See also p. 187.
 
 262 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 and action, a mystery which remains even when the 
 connexion is observed in the simplest instances. 
 
 " He spoke," said the reporter, " of the 
 activities of the brain, of the correlation be- 
 " Sanderson twccn its physical changcs and the 
 knows." changes of mind. He spoke of how, 
 through link after link, any given outward move- 
 ment of the body was caused by changes in the 
 central nervous system. But nobody knows," he 
 concluded, " how the change of purpose and will 
 becomes translated into the simplest of muscular 
 actions ; how the mind moves the hand. That 
 nobody knows." " Ah ! " cried a listener, " San- 
 derson knows " — fondly imagining that the phy- 
 siologist sufficiently acute, sufficiently trained, 
 knew a way to bridge this, perhaps essentially 
 necessary, gap in our knowledge. Sir John 
 Burdon-Sanderson would have been the first to 
 smile at the opinion, with a smile a little 
 Dantesque. The physiologist laughs at his own 
 supposed omniscience ; the histologist (that is, 
 the man who uses the microscope) knows that, 
 however far he may penetrate into the secrets of 
 living structure, he is always confronted by the 
 same spectacle of organized life. The growth of 
 knowledge means, in this case, the growth of 
 wonder ; it makes for reverence. And this re- 
 verence is not lessened by the observed correlation 
 of the different parts — to dismiss in a breath
 
 AIDS FROM SCIENCE 263 
 
 what might well take up all my time — nor by the 
 closeness of the dependence in details between 
 thought or spiritual life, and that which is its 
 organ, its physical basis, its material sine qud non. 
 I should say, then, that for the religious mind a 
 scientific training in the observation of life is of 
 definite and profound advantage. 
 
 (ii) Analogy. In the second place, there is the 
 familiar encouragement which comes from analogy. 
 Analogy also is enriched by the new 
 
 ^^ r , , , -^ , , . Second Aid: 
 
 mmuteness or knowledge, and by its Enrichment 
 wider range. We always pointed to the 
 striking facts of animal life, to metamorphosis, the 
 change of the caterpillar to the butterfly, the 
 growth of the plant. Drummond added to our 
 stock instances some striking ones of degenera- 
 tion. Instances of larval activity and of paedo- 
 genesis readily suggest parallels in the history 
 of societies and states.^ I would rather point 
 
 ^ It is a little dangerous to offer any notes on technical terms, 
 when one cannot find space for an explanation of ail. Such words as 
 coelenterata will be found in most dictionaries. On parasitism and 
 symbiosis van Beneden's Animal Parasites and Messmates (Inter- 
 national Scientific Series) will be found a sufficient guide. Of 
 pedogenesis I do not recall a like accessible account. The facts 
 referred to by the word will be found under the heads Axolotl and 
 Ambly stoma in indexes, and in the article Siredon in the Encyclopedia 
 Britannica. The word piedogenesis oti'ers a special interpretation of 
 the facts of the metamorphosis of a species of Siredon into a species 
 of Amblystoma, which had been known as a distinct genus of 
 amphibians. 
 
 It is thought that a certain siredon is really tlu- larva of a certiiin
 
 264 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 to analogies of a more general scope ; to what 
 might be called the gradual advance in the 
 realization of individuality — very striking, for 
 example, among the coelenterata ; to the won- 
 derful facts of nutrition ; to the many ways in 
 which the whole world is linked each part to each 
 in mutual dependence. I might point to the 
 manner of growth, to its conditions, to its rela- 
 tion to death, to the meaning of death itself, its 
 advantage to the life of the species as a whole, 
 discussed in brilliant essays by Weismann. 
 
 All material analogies, we have said, fade 
 before those which are supplied by life ; and they 
 are not mere analogies, but afford light for the 
 guidance of our own conduct. We learn, for ex- 
 ample, that expression is not a functionless decora- 
 tion, but is necessary to the realization of life ; the 
 foliage necessary for the nutrition of the root. 
 Then again, and more particularly, there are the 
 strange phenomena of symbiosis, that extraordi- 
 narily intimate dependence of one organic form 
 
 amblystoma ; and that this larva has regularly and for an indefinite 
 time reproduced itself just as if it were an adult perennibranchiate, 
 a large newt ; and that it is shown to be a larval form because 
 under certain circumstances it grows to an adult which is a widely 
 different (caduci branchiate) air-breathing animal. All air-breathing 
 amphibians have a water-breathing gilled larval form, like the 
 tadpole of the frog. A race of tadpoles, multiplying as tadpoles, 
 but capable of becoming frogs, would exhibit the phenomenon of 
 paedogenesis. But paedogenesis is, of course, not indicated by the 
 mere discovery that of two supposed species (whether of the same 
 geuns or not) one is really the larval form of the other.
 
 AIDS FROM SCIENCE 265 
 
 upon another, which we see, for example, in the 
 lichen, which is a combination of two plants, each 
 one feeding the other ; or in looser cases not 
 strictly so to be described, like that of the 
 anemones which the hermit crab plants upon his 
 shell that by their stinging powers he may be 
 protected from some fish, while the anemones are 
 themselves no doubt assisted by his slow travels 
 which bring them to untried waters and fresh 
 food. There is the gloomier spectacle of para- 
 sitism so carefully worked out by Drummond ; 
 the degradation of forms which are in earlier stages 
 active and highly complicated, like certain of the 
 Crustacea, to the state of mere mouths, blind 
 mouths, which only suck the life-blood of a host, 
 for whom they do nothing in return. All this is 
 very familiar ground. Again, there is the old 
 comparison of the state or society to an organic 
 form, a comparison familiar and accepted among 
 the ancients, employed to throw light upon the 
 nature of society and to recall men to forgotten 
 social duties. When Menenius Agrippa told the 
 fable of Venter et Membra to the Roman crowd he 
 was telling an old story to them ; and St. Paul used 
 the old analogy, roughly speaking, rather to point 
 forgotten obligations of duty than to make an 
 original statement. He appealed to the analogy as 
 a well-known one. For us it ought to carry with it 
 the sense of a much more delicate co-ordination.
 
 266 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 a much stricter interdependence than most of 
 the old teachers conceived. It ought to appear 
 to us more absolutely impossible for one member 
 truly to profit at the expense of others than it did 
 in old days, when members of classes were led to 
 suppose that their prosperity might be based upon 
 the poverty of their neighbours, and nations 
 imagined that commerce advanced through the 
 ruin of other States/ We may point to this, to 
 the delicacy, to the penetration, the breadth of 
 analogy, as one of the gains which scientific study 
 will bring to the religious mind. And further, we 
 may say that such a study, as one of the chief 
 fruits of analogy, shows to be quite untenable 
 the thought of an opposition — so dangerous to 
 religion — between vitality and order, between 
 health and consistency of form. Yet with regard 
 to this matter of form, the analogy will support a 
 conception of unity consisting in identity of vital 
 growth, and not constituted or defined by an 
 easily described outline. 
 
 (iii) In the third place, let us briefly mention 
 
 the advantage of more general observations of the 
 
 teaching of evolution, of natural selec- 
 
 ThirdAid: . ° , _ ' _ . 
 
 Many gains tion, SO cloquent ot pertection growing 
 study of out of imperfection by a process ot 
 
 evolution. , , . , i- r 
 
 struggle ; demonstrating the reality or 
 
 ^ When I spoke of this coiulition of opinion as a thing of the 
 past, it was not in irony ; it was in 1903.
 
 AIDS FROM SCIENCE 267 
 
 a true presence of life which is undisplayed and 
 even, so to speak, unrealized, which not only is 
 not manifested but which cannot in a full sense be 
 said to exist ; showing that through struggle the 
 potentiality which was general or indifferentiate, 
 works out, by success in this or that department 
 of the fight to the various strong and beautiful 
 forms which make up the organic population of 
 the world. I think it will be evident that a 
 scanty treatment of such a theme as this can be 
 nothing but misleading. It will be our truer 
 wisdom to have pointed in quite general terms to 
 immense topics of encouragement which may be 
 found in regions once, as I think, quite unreason- 
 ably, supposed to be dangerous to spiritual faith. 
 
 For I shall venture to add that evolution 
 throws light upon the doctrine of the Fall ; that 
 it enables us to understand how a state important 
 can be at once in a real sense good, J,°Pgfly 
 and in a real sense rudimentary ; how enumerated, 
 a process of growth may be at once a real advance 
 and yet a faulty advance ; how the state in which 
 we find ourselves may indeed be vastly greater 
 in certain respects than the initial condition of 
 man, and yet immeasurably removed from the 
 state of happiness to which from that rudimentary 
 beginning he ought to have advanced. Evolution 
 throws light and not darkness upon the doctrine 
 of the Fall ; upon the possibilities of restoration ;
 
 268 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 upon the necessity of salvation, not by a life other 
 than our own, but in a life which becomes our 
 own. 
 
 It is a familiar thought to us that the general 
 belief in growth ought to encourage us with regard 
 to the history, the structure, the composition of 
 the sacred books of revelation itself as it has come 
 to man. Truth, being pure truth in itself, yet 
 struggles long in the darkness which cannot over- 
 whelm it, even as life grows slowly through and in 
 and by the conquest of the dead material, whose 
 very character of inorganic is the negation of 
 life. 
 
 V. But in conclusion, I would point for a 
 
 moment to the illumination shed by science in its 
 
 . broadest possible sense upon relig-ion. 
 
 The last and . ^ . . ^ ^ ° 
 
 greatest What is this broadcst and most funda- 
 
 aid comes ^ . . ^ . . . 
 
 by the mental lesson or scientinc inquiry r 
 
 knowledge What is it which will stand fast for the 
 student of science when many particular 
 theories go ? What is our modern gain from the 
 long brooding over the external scene ? Surely it 
 is the universality, or at any rate the growth of 
 our perception, of law. This which is the haunt- 
 ing terror of a religion distrustful of itself, is the 
 true friend of a wise confidence in God. As the 
 study of life advances we see that we must reject 
 as baseless the notion that law is characteristic of 
 certain regions and shut out from certain other
 
 AIDS FROM SCIENCE 269 
 
 regions of existence in order to make room for 
 freedom. It used to be supposed that life was in 
 some sense removed as an exception from the 
 ordinary sway of mechanical necessity. If we 
 have learnt by further studies that those con- 
 ceptions of ordinary sequence which had of old 
 been traced in respect ot the movements of masses 
 of stuff are traceable also in the actions of life, and 
 are to be supposed as having operated in bringing 
 the forms of life to the state in which they actually 
 exist ; surely this is a gain and not a loss. For, 
 while we learn this, we do not lose the old know- 
 ledge of the self-government, the growth and 
 freedom, of life. 
 
 If law penetrates the organic world, surely 
 this should teach us that law is not inconsistent 
 with an essential though limited freedom ; for 
 freedom of some sort and to some extent there 
 certainly is in life. 
 
 The conclusion we ought to draw is not a 
 new negation about life, but a new affirmation about 
 law ; namely, that it cannot be incon- ^ . .^ 
 
 . ~ r A • Law in life 
 
 sistent with freedom because we find it should teach 
 
 .... , , r J V us a new 
 
 m the living, and because we tina it affirmation 
 
 .... . , about law ; 
 
 more evidently in proportion to the not a new 
 fulness and the reahty of life. For abfut'ufe. 
 we may say with a certain truth that 
 there are among the forms of life some more 
 living than others which also truly live ; forms
 
 270 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 in which life is more fully realized. But these 
 are not the forms in which law is less evident, 
 less fully realized, less completely organized. 
 
 The * highly generalized ' primitive animal 
 consisting of one cell, presents a condition in 
 which law is less vigorous, less delicately elabo- 
 rated than it is in the vertebrate. In the low 
 type nourishment may be received by the whole 
 surface, by the flowing of protoplasm round food, 
 by a mere invasion of the cell-mass ; in the 
 * speciahzed ' type nourishment must enter by 
 one small aperture and pass to a difficult assimi- 
 lation through a series of chambers in each of 
 which the machinery and the conditions of the 
 successful treatment of food are of the most elabo- 
 rate and the most invariably indispensable kind. 
 
 In the low type life is continuous, repro- 
 duction is on any one of several modes in the 
 same animal, and oftenest by mere division of 
 substance ; repair is hardly an incident, and 
 survival no particular adventure. In the verte- 
 brate all these things are matter of the most 
 accurate adjustment of means to ends. There is 
 quite a tolerable sense in which it may be said that 
 law universally present, universally and everywhere 
 equally real, is yet more actualized in the higher 
 form, because it is developed in the pressure of 
 a more numerous and more delicate series of 
 necessities.
 
 AIDS FROM SCIENCE 271 
 
 Yet it is surely the vertebrate which exhibits 
 the larger self-determination ; the greater power 
 to evolve from the potentialities of the rest of 
 the universe, that one which is actually desired. 
 It is in the highest vertebrate, man, that you find 
 the greatest complexity of necessities and the 
 largest scope of self-determination. In him 
 appears obedience. He does not move with 
 the current or towards the most desired object. 
 His success increases in the degree in which he 
 follows by obedience a law known in his own 
 being, in the rest of nature, and by the voice 
 of Prophets. And to say obedience is to say 
 freedom, for there can be no obedience excepting 
 in a freely operating will. 
 
 Within the ranks of human nature the same 
 concomitant variation of law and freedom may 
 be observed. The savage has few wants, few 
 necessities one might say, and a most helpless 
 dependence upon what appear to him the in- 
 calculable gifts of nature. The civilized man with 
 his finely adjusted life and exacting necessities, is 
 profuse in expedients to meet them ; and to 
 provide his hardly digested food, covers the globe 
 with his conquests, diplomacies, commerce, ex- 
 changes. The pressure under which he maintains 
 individual lives, which in a savage state would 
 be eliminated, acts as a challenge to the self- 
 determined ingenuity, and this in turn extracts
 
 272 THE SCIENTIFIC TEMPER IN RELIGION 
 
 from the possibilities of the world actualities 
 which without man's will would never have been. 
 
 Life and Law do not vary inversely, so that 
 where there is most law there is least life, and 
 where there is most life there is least law. And 
 in this fact we ought to find pointers to a 
 mysterious secret which now indeed we cannot 
 reach, but which we have strong reasons to 
 believe in ; the secret of a reconciliation which 
 is perfect and complete between law and freedom. 
 
 If the two lines under observation were 
 
 divergent within the field of observation, we 
 
 should have no right to this hope. 
 
 The lines of -r, i i- i i 
 
 law and But the lines converge, they approach 
 converge. within the scope of our view ; for in 
 proportion as we observe the strict co- 
 ordination, the wonderful and unerring corre- 
 spondences of life, we also observe its power of 
 relative self-determination. Nor is the growth 
 only one of observation ; it is an increase lying 
 within the facts themselves. 
 
 For we may say briefly that whereas all beings 
 are under law, it is precisely those which most 
 fully understand and most fully submit to the 
 law as it penetrates themselves, which are also 
 most completely set free for the accomplishment 
 of original effects which without the strange and 
 secret spring of living will could not have come 
 to pass.
 
 The ob- 
 served facts 
 
 AIDS FROM SCIENCE 273 
 
 I submit that in this contemplation of law 
 by modern science, and in the effort made by 
 modern thought to destroy the barriers 
 which once seemed to limit the reign 
 of law/ we have the most general, the pfconcomi 
 
 ' o ' tant varia- 
 
 most lasting, and the most precious, of tion point 
 
 ° . . . ^ . . the direction 
 
 the aids which scientific training or ofacom- 
 
 . - , . J , plete recon- 
 
 scientinc observation renders to the ciiiation of 
 devout mind ; and this because the win, of 
 observed interpenetration of mechanism and religion, 
 and will points — as to a goal still far 
 ahead and out of sight — to the final reconcilia- 
 tion, for our thought, of our two mysteries of 
 experience ; the mystery of unbending necessity, 
 and the mystery, revealed in our consciousness, 
 of unconquerable liberty. 
 
 ' We may speak of the Reign of Law, though not of the 
 Reign of Laws. Scientific 'Laws' (law of inverse s(]uares and so 
 forth) do not reign. They are generalisations, less or more im- 
 perfect, made by the observing mind. But the fact that any generali- 
 sation can be made at all indicates a regularity in the sequences 
 observed, as well as in that which observes them ; and this regu- 
 larity, rather divined than either proved or assumed, is fairly spoken 
 of in such words as ' uniformity of nature,' and ' reign of law.'
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Paley's Natural Theology 
 
 The instance given in the text at p. 72 is chosen 
 for its moderate and unsensational character. It 
 is interesting for its agreement with the Selec- 
 tionist rejection of the theory of adaptations pro- 
 duced by Direct Effect. But the suggestion of 
 any other natural method of production would 
 have been equally unwelcome to Paley. His 
 procedure is to show the presence of purpose by 
 the absence of discoverable process ; for a strong 
 proof of Design in his system, it must be " im- 
 possible to assign any cause except the final cause," 
 for the observed structure. 
 
 Though undertaken under the influence of a 
 false antithesis, Paley's study of adaptations may 
 well have been fruitful for science, 
 and his disproof of merely mechanical Ts^eSito 
 'Direct-Effects' might still in skilful =''^""- 
 hands yield support to Selectionist views.^ 
 
 * Other religiously minded writers on science might tor the same 
 reason still be read with profit. Their rhetoric, "warmed by
 
 276 APPENDIX 
 
 Paley speaks of God as of One Who had 
 worked within the conditions of the world. His 
 favourite word is " contrivance." 
 
 " If this is not contrivance, what is?" "In 
 order to meet this difficulty, the eyes are made 
 scarcely larger than the head of a corking pin." ^ 
 Again he speaks of " the stiff robust cartilage 
 which butchers call the pax-wax. . . . No such 
 organ is found in the human subject. . . . This 
 cautionary expedient is limited to quadrupeds ; 
 the care of the Creator is seen where it is wanted." ^ 
 He overlooked the ligamenta suhflava and ligamen- 
 tum nucha. But it is not this that matters. It is 
 the method of his argument. 
 
 " The Creator had to prepare for different 
 situations, for different difficulties, yet the purpose 
 is accomplished not less successfully in one case 
 than in the other. . . . and without deserting 
 the original idea." ^ " The retired under-jaw of 
 a swine works in the ground ... a conformation 
 so happy was not the gift of chance." When we 
 come to the chapter on Prospective Contrivances 
 (chap, xiv.) we have further the notion of a 
 
 emotion," often lit on a particularly happy and lucid description of 
 structures ; and their teleological aim secured an appreciation of 
 functional relations which is not always shown in a greater degree 
 by modern writers. See, for an example, the Twelfth Dialogue of 
 Theron and Aspasio, by the Rev. James Hervey, who died 1758. 
 1 Natural Theology, i. 330. 
 Ibid., i. 292. '^ Ibid., i. 279.
 
 NEWTON 277 
 
 limitation under the conditions of Time. " That 
 intelHgence which was employed in creation looked 
 beyond the first year of the infant's life ; yet whilst 
 she was providing for functions which were after 
 that term to become necessary, was careful not to 
 incommode those that preceded them." ^ 
 
 Certainly this is not simply the " remote " 
 Deity of the Deists. The activity spoken of is 
 indeed in a sense past, and the concep- And not a 
 tion is a very long way from that of an ^^'^^• 
 Immanent Divine Power. But the Power is in 
 another sense all too much inside the world, 
 reading its problems, managing its material with 
 wonderful foresight, with impartial attention, with 
 economy of effort, and with a versatility which 
 commands the admiration of the most accomplished 
 human critic. 
 
 Newton 
 
 Our reverence for the almost prophetic cha- 
 racter of Newton's genius need not hide from us 
 that, according to the mental tone of 
 
 .... Newton. 
 
 his age, he sometimes, even more than 
 Paley, seems to speak of God as working on 
 the world's scene with remarkable but occasional 
 success. Of course this view may be true. There 
 may be, and indeed to our capacity there are, 
 
 ' Natural Tlicology, i. 309.
 
 278 APPENDIX 
 
 exceptional evidences of the Unseen Power. But 
 these are not to be relied on because they are 
 exceptional but because they are exemplary. 
 
 He writes thus about the origin of the Solar 
 System. Much, he seems to say, may be set 
 down to mechanical process. '* But how the 
 matter should divide itself into two sorts ; . . . 
 or if the sun at first were an opake body like the 
 planets, ... or the planets lucid bodies like the 
 sun, how he alone should be changed into a 
 shining body whilst all they continue opake ; or 
 all they be changed into opake ones, whilst he 
 remains unchanged ; I do not think explicable by 
 meer natural causes, but am forced to ascribe 
 it to the counsel and contrivance of a voluntary 
 Agent." ^ 
 
 Again, " the motions which the planets now 
 have, could not spring from any natural cause 
 alone, but were impressed by an intelligent Agent." 
 
 " Lastly, I see nothing extraordinary in the 
 inclination of the Earth's axis for proving a Deity." 
 
 " There is yet another argument for a Deity, 
 which I take to be a very strong one ; but till the 
 principles on which it is grounded are better 
 received, I think it more adviseable to let it sleep." ^ 
 
 These last instances give a clearer and a more 
 
 1 Sir I. Newton. Letters to Mr. Bentley. First letter. Horsley's 
 Nenvton, vol. iv. p. 430. London, 1782. 
 
 2 //'/(/., p. 431.
 
 DIDEROT 279 
 
 favourable view of the great reasoner's intention. 
 Those parts of the world's system which seem to 
 result from " natural causes alone," are not said 
 to be thereby less truly the result of the creative 
 will ; but they are less available for purposes of 
 apologetic — " for proving a Deity." 
 
 Diderot 
 
 The limitation of a given scientific discipline 
 by its own method, a limitation which is no 
 disaster but a condition of progress, is spoken 
 of on p. 21. 
 
 The following passage from Diderot is in- 
 teresting in this connexion. It is in his work 
 De r interpretation de la Nature^ xlix. 
 
 He complains of the reasoning of the 
 systematists in natural science, whom he calls 
 methodistes, " Mais c'est une chose trop singuliere 
 que la dialectique de quelques methodistes pour 
 n'en pas donner un echantillon." He gives an 
 example from Linnaeus who, when discussing the 
 differentiation of man as a species concludes, " Je 
 n'ai jamais su distinguer I'homme du singe. . . . 
 La parole n'est point pour moi un charact^re 
 distinctif ; je n'admets, selon ma methode, que 
 des characteres qui dependent du nombre, de 
 la figure, de la proportion, et de la situation."
 
 28o APPENDIX 
 
 (so far Linnaeus. Diderot answers) " ' Done votre 
 methode est mauvaise,' dit la logique. ' Done 
 rhomme est un animal a quatre pieds,' dit le 
 naturaliste." 
 
 We do not share Diderot's discontent, though 
 Linnaeus' method, even as a method, is imper- 
 fect, and leads to a methodically false conclusion. 
 But Diderot complains because it is a method. 
 We should rather say to the naturalist. Your 
 science is of necessity a matter of method, and 
 by the same necessity it must take a special^ a 
 limited view. Only it should recognize the fact 
 of limitation, and if possible define the limits. 
 Linnaeus should say, Man is anatomically {i.e. 
 selon ma methode) indistinguishable from a 
 monkey. 
 
 But note (we should continue) that if the 
 qualifying word is to rescue you from the charge 
 of ridiculous conclusions or bad logic, this quali- 
 fying word must have the same qualifying force 
 in all contexts ; and anatomy must not in your 
 next breath put forward a claim to be a philosophy 
 of life. 
 
 It is precisely because you claim the immu- 
 nities of a method that we leave your conclusion 
 unchallenged. Indeed it was only by strict atten- 
 tion to your method that you managed to manu- 
 facture the conclusion at all. 
 
 You must not now ask us to accept it as
 
 METHOD 281 
 
 a refutation or an alternative of other conclusions 
 which we never made, nous autres, selon votre 
 methode a vous. 
 
 At Capetown, not so very long ago, the 
 Malay (Moslem) authorities declared that, what- 
 ever the Museum might say. Crawfish were 
 " Spiders " for purposes of the Moslem law. 
 And the Mollahs were perfectly right to keep 
 to their method, and to enforce its conclusions 
 upon those who wished to be reckoned obedient 
 children of Islam. 
 
 But it would be a little too bad to ask us 
 to review our definition of Arachnida on that 
 account ; and when an enlightened Zoology in 
 turn has reached fresh provisional conclusions, 
 it must be content to say, " For purposes of 
 Zoology, man is this or that." 
 
 Otherwise Science as well as Religion must 
 suffer from the perpetual disturbance of study 
 by an intellectual /r.^^'^j. 
 
 In the science and practice of law, we have a 
 familiar and acknowledged instance of the limita- 
 tion which belongs to method. There the limita- 
 tion is deliberately made and well understood by 
 the lawyers ; and moreover, they observe one set 
 of limits when they are distributing equity, and 
 another when awarding damages at Common Law, 
 and again a third when they are administering 
 penal statutes. The same admitted facts will
 
 282 APPENDIX 
 
 yield three different results of judgement under 
 these different disciplines of the lawyers' method. 
 The lawyers understand, but the laymen at law 
 do not always understand this. They sometimes 
 forget the deliberate limitations, and when the 
 lawyers (judge and advocates together) have 
 simply declared that in a given case a particular 
 tooth of a particular statute will or will not bite, 
 their decision has been used outside the Court as 
 if it supplied an item for the general history of 
 morals, or guidance for the developement of the 
 Church, or defined the limits of belief " on matters 
 about which hearts burn and souls tremble." ^ 
 
 This is not the fault of the lawyers. They 
 make, or at least recognize, their limits deliberately, 
 and if " the law " is in any case an unsatisfactory 
 product, they would advise men not " to have the 
 law of" one another in that case. 
 
 It is not so with other specialists — and we 
 are all specialists more or less. In other studies 
 the limitation is very often made quite un- 
 consciously. The man who uses a given 
 method is doing all he can^ and is not aware that 
 anything more can be done. His method is 
 his vocation. It is not deliberately chosen ; it is 
 the one he can use. And he very naturally thinks 
 it is a universal organon. And, indeed, in theory 
 
 1 Dean Church on Privy Council Jutlgements. Occasional Papers, 
 vol. ii. p. 38.
 
 METHOD 283 
 
 it is universally applicable^ but its products are not 
 the only products possible. If a man is not in- 
 stinctively conscious of this truth, he does not 
 always become aware of it by reflexion ; for a great 
 systematist is not of necessity also a great epistem- 
 ologist. He may study stars or monuments for 
 the great gain of us all, without studying the 
 nature of knowledge. 
 
 When one urges the reality of methodic limita- 
 tion, it is very important to add that it is not reason 
 or even reasoning which is objected to in any case 
 whatever. There are said to be Christians who 
 have been taught " to think reasoning wicked." 
 They have been misled into a most unchristian 
 school. Reasoning is precious, so far as it is 
 reasoning. But all our reasoning is very imper- 
 fect, and some of it is worse than the rest. We 
 do not object to reasoning when we object to 
 reasoning badly, or without materials. 
 
 Moreover, to avoid misunderstanding, it must 
 be repeated that the limit of a method is not 
 theoretically a limit with respect to the field of 
 application. Any method may justly be applied 
 to anything whatsoever to which it can be applied. 
 But the product will not always repay the process. 
 Sometimes, as in the case of a chemical examina- 
 tion of sound, the answer will be purely negative 
 — " no results obtained." 
 
 You may, for example, have a geological study
 
 284 APPENDIX 
 
 of Wordsworth's poems, or Watson's, or any- 
 other treasure of literature. But the geological 
 description of these will not be particularly valuable. 
 It will not distinguish them sufficiently from one 
 another, or from dockyards, slag-heaps, disused 
 omnibuses, live torpedoes, and Etruscan jewels, 
 all of which for geology belong to the irregularities 
 of the earth's surface caused by recent organic 
 activity. 
 
 All sorts of things may be examined by any 
 method. The limit of the method appears in the 
 particular kind of judgement or description of the 
 things which is obtained. And what has to be 
 remembered is that the result of no one method 
 is the only possible result. 
 
 Immanence 
 
 In the preface, p. xii., I have reluctantly avoided 
 the word * immanence.' The newer use of this 
 word concerning God, to express the belief " that 
 the Divine is in everything, pervading and em- 
 bracing and dwelling in it " (S. Gregory of Nyssa, 
 in Inge's Christian Mysticism^ p. 100), is not yet 
 wholly free from inconvenience ; especially when 
 the argument in which it appears dwells upon the 
 impression conveyed by nature. For in Spinoza 
 and other philosophical writers the sense of re- 
 maining or abiding seems to have been emphatic
 
 IMMANENCE 285 
 
 in the word, so that It contained the force of 
 * intransitive,' and indicated a power dwelling in, 
 but not acting beyond^ a body. And in theology 
 the same emphasis appeared in the word ; for it 
 indicated those actions of God which find their 
 end within the Divine nature, In contradistinction 
 from such a Divine act as the creation of the 
 world. It Is a question of a word, whether or no 
 it is permanently polarized. One would be glad 
 to learn how, If at all, this word, or Its verb. Is 
 used by earlier latin ecclesiastical writers, in con- 
 nexion with the Divine Presence. The doctrine 
 now Intended by the word can be guarded from 
 danger of Pantheism by the balancing doctrine of 
 Transcendence. It has no necessary connexion 
 whatever with Stoical or any other Pantheism. 
 S. Augustine, who pours scorn on the conception 
 of Anima — or, as he calls It, Animus — Mundi (De 
 Civ. Deij Lib. IV. cap. xll.), gives In many forms 
 the teaching that the very existence of things 
 depends upon the Divine presence in them. 
 
 Doubtless the Impression of " a soul of good- 
 ness " In them is by no means the on/y impression 
 which the objects of sense give. We Christians 
 have received words — " subject to vanity," " the 
 creature groaneth and travalleth " — which provide 
 for those other and darker Impressions, while 
 delivering us from the dualism which contempla- 
 tion has sometimes drawn from the perplexing
 
 286 APPENDIX 
 
 and oppressive spectacle. What we see is that 
 the sustaining element is good ; and that the evil 
 does not belong to material existence as such. 
 
 S. Augustine may be studied in this connexion 
 with special profit, because he had known in 
 Manichaeism a dualistic system in earnest, and 
 which actually afforded the foundation for a 
 vigorous society. 
 
 THE END 
 
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 A 2
 
 lo A SELECTION OF WORKS 
 
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 IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. n 
 
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 12 A SELECTION OF WORKS 
 
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 IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 13 
 
 Lear. — Works by, and Edited by, H. 
 continued. 
 
 L. Sidney Lear.— 
 
 Madame Louise de France, 
 Daughter of Louis XV., known 
 also as the Mother T^rfese de St. 
 Augustin. 
 
 A Dominican Artist : a Sketch of 
 the Life of the Rev. P^re Besson, 
 of the Order of St. Dominic. 
 
 Henri Perreyve. By PfeRE 
 Gratry. With Portrait. 
 
 St. Francis de Sales, Bishop and 
 Prince of Geneva. 
 
 A Christian Painter of the 
 Nineteenth Century : being 
 the Life of Hippolyte Flandrin. 
 
 The Revival of Priestly Life 
 IN THE Seventeenth Century 
 IN France. 
 
 BOSSUET AND HIS CONTEMPORA- 
 RIES. 
 
 F^NELON, Archbishop of Cam- 
 
 BRAI. 
 
 Henri Dominique Lacordaire. 
 
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 [continued.
 
 14 A SELECTION OF WORKS 
 
 Liddon.— Works by Henry Parry Liddon, D.D,, D.C.L., 
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 IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. i? 
 
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 i8 A SELECTION OF WORKS 
 
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 IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 19 
 
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