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Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/722

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702
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

common allegiance. All that we can require of any man is that he should honestly present any facts with which he may be called upon to deal, and that he should not refuse a candid examination to any relevant evidence in matters that lie within the scope of his inquiries. It is no part of the business of science or of any one speaking in the name of science to say how a given individual shall assess the evidence on a given question. There is such a thing at times as force majeure in intellectual as well as in political or military matters; and where this manifestly exists for one who works strenuously for science in his own field, others who do not feel the stress may properly refrain from disrespectful comments. We hold that the message of science comes home to every man in some measure or other, bidding him to work for the truth, to rid his mind of delusion, of partiality, of prejudice, of distorting self interest. Some respond to the appeal more perfectly than others; hut it would not be safe to say that, where the most complete tabula rasa has been produced, there the greatest amount of scientific energy will be disengaged.

Holding these views, we are prepared to allow the fullest freedom to every one to reconcile in any way he pleases his religious convictions with his scientific views. How the reconciliation is effected is not our concern; it is the concern of each individual that it shall bean honest one. It is his concern and it is his responsibility; why should a stranger meddle therewith? The message of religion, reduced to its simplest terms, is identical with the message of science: "Be true!" and the man who consciously fails of intellectual sincerity will not feel much happier on the religious than on the purely intellectual side. It is that time that Ephraim ceased to envy Judah, and Judah to vex Ephraim. There is ample work in the world both for science and for religion. It is for science to establish order among ascertained phenomena and to deduce from them the laws, or some of the laws, which govern the succession of events and prescribe the conditions of human life. It is for religion to uphold the sanctity of the moral law, to which science might be tempted not to assign any special pre-eminence, and to keep open an outlook into the origin and essential nature of things, and into those as yet unrealized possibilities of existence which science, full fed upon certainties, might be disposed to ignore. Science and religion may each watch over the other with advantage, seeing that each has a besetting sin—science a tendency to a hard intellectual pride, and religion a tendency to superstition and general indifference to external evidence. If each would recognize its own weakness and accept in good part the services of the other, the result would be a higher type of moral and intellectual life than has hitherto prevailed.

Science, it must, however, be understood, is unyielding in its demand that the adhesion of the mind to any opinion or conclusion shall be governed by evidence and not determined by mere views of expediency or convenience. There is therefore a somewhat unscientific tone in the remarks of our professor when he says: "We will continue to believe that in our creation we received from God a moral nature and an immortal spirit; that we have somehow become demoralized, and that the taint of our degeneracy is hereditary." It is not scientific to say "We will continue to believe" anything; if we will to believe, we turn our back on evidence, or at least are prepared to do so. And if it is not scientific to say