CALIFORNIA INTRODUCTION. "Many excellent people", said the distinguished phy sicist Lord Rayleigh 1 on one occasion in a public speech, "are afraid of science as tending towards materialism. That such apprehension should exist is not surprising, for unfortunately there are writers, speaking in the name of science, who have set themselves to foster it. It is true that amongst scientific men, as in other classes, crude views are to be met with as to the deeper things of nature; but that the lifelong beliefs of Newton, of Faraday, and of Maxwell, are inconsistent with the scientific habit of mind, is surely a proposition which I need not pause to refute." We might have adopted these words of the eminent scientist 2 as the motto of our work, for they give a clear statement of the fundamental idea which we seek to develop here. In Germany also we have a great many writers, who, announcing themselves as champions of 1 Report of the 54th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Montreal in August and September 1884: Presidential Address 22. London 1885. 2 John William Strutt, since 1873 Lord Rayleigh, born in 1842, was Maxwell's successor as Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge. He is one of the greatest recent authorities on Natura Philosophy in England. He attained a world-wide reputation when in 1894 he discovered a hitherto unknown constituent of the atmosphere, namely argon. Kneller, Christianity. I science, proclaim in its name and on its authority the irréparable defeat of religion and Christianity. Scientific discoveries, we are assured, have undermined the very foundations of religion belief in the existence of God, and in the presence of a spiritual soul in man and in short we must either renounce religion altogether or cast about for a new form of it, more in harmony with the results of the modern interpretation of nature. Assertions of this kind are to be met with everywhere. Newspapers and brochures are full of them; popular works on science treat them as self-evident, and seize every opportunity of insinuating that no one of any scientific standing any longer troubles about religion. Nor does it need any deep knowledge of human nature to understand how greatly representations of this kind contribute to the spread of Materialism. It is not only in matters of dress and outer things that fashion rules, and that society takes its tone from certain 'circles'. Those who by wealth, nobility of birth, or erudition stand out from the common mass, exercise, by word and example, the most far-reaching influence in graver questions also, questions in which least of all their influence ought to be felt. How then could the average man fail to be startled when, following an exposition of the brilliant discoveries of modern research, he is assured, or at least given to understand, that every eminent mind that has contributed to such marvels has rejected Christianity and welcomed in Materialism and Atheism the light and the salvation of the future? The essential value of such an argument is indeed. very slight. Even if it were true that modern scientists as one man stood out against Christ and the Church, this would offer no disproof of Christianity. In earlier days, at all events, Natural Science took up no such position, and the fact that a certain opinion is for a period generally accepted cannot be held to guarantee its truth. The leaders of Physics, Chemistry, Geology speak with authority as regards the actual facts and empirical laws of their own special provinces. But Materialism, Atheism, Positivism are not observed facts, but systems of philosophy, inferences from facts, and inferences which fall, properly speaking, within the province not of Science but of Metaphysics. And as regards conclusions of this order, the scientist is not, as such, the authoritative judge. Other people have quite as good, and indeed better claims to be heard. "I do not think", says Lord Rayleigh elsewhere, "that he has a claim superior to that of other educated men, to assume the attitude of a prophet. In his heart he knows that underneath the theories that he constructs there lie contradictions he cannot reconcile. The higher mysteries of being, if penetrable at all by human intellect, require other weapons than those of calculation and experiment." Further it is a fact of history that many an opinion. which represented itself as the only truly scientific opinion, has none the less fallen in course of time into contempt; and that very often the higher synthesis by no means confirms the brilliant pretensions of 'culture'. Our Lord Jesus Christ had ranked against him, solidly and with a complete self-consciousness, the Science of the Jews. But, in spite of this, the wisdom of the scribes and their Talmudic erudition is to-day utterly disregarded; Christ was right, the Science of His day was wrong. In a later century Neo-Platonism spoke of Christianity, although borrowing largely from it, as the product |