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But we are in danger of forgetting our main theme, as Dr. Draper seems to do, while we linger with him over these interesting wayside topics. We may perhaps be excused, however, if we have not yet made any very explicit allusion to the “Conflict between Religion and Science,” because this work seems to be in the main a repetition en petit of the “Intellectual Development of Europe,” and what we have said will apply as well to one as to the other. In the little book, as in the big one, we hear a great deal about the Arabs, and something about Columbus and Galileo, who made men accept sundry truths in the teeth of clerical opposition; and, as before, we float gently down the current of history without being over well-informed as to the precise didactic purpose of our voyage. Here, indeed, even our headings and running-titles do not materially help us, for though we are supposed to be witnessing, or mayhap assisting in, a perennial conflict between “science” and “religion,” we are nowhere enlightened as to what the cause or character of this conflict is, nor are we enabled to get a good look at either of the parties to the strife. With regard to it “religion” especially are we left in the dark. What this dreadful thing is towards which “science” is always playing the part of Herakles towards the Lernaean Hydra, we are left to gather from the course of the narrative. Yet, in a book with any valid claim to clearsightedness, one would think such a point as this ought to receive very explicit preliminary treatment.

The course of the narrative, however, leaves us in little doubt as to what Dr. Draper means by a conflict between science and religion. When he enlarges on the trite story of Galileo, and alludes to the more modern quarrel between the Church and the geologists, and does this in the belief that he is thereby illustrating an antagonism between religion and science, it is obvious that he identifies the cause of the anti-geologists and the persecutors of Galileo with the cause of religion. The word “religion” is to him a symbol which stands for unenlightened bigotry or narrow-minded unwillingness to look facts in the face. Such a conception of religion is common enough, and unhappily a great deal has been done to strengthen it by the very persons to whom the interests of religion are presumed to be a professional care. It is nevertheless a very superficial conception, and no book which is vitiated by it can have much philosophic value. It is simply the crude impression which, in minds unaccustomed to analysis, is left by the fact that theologians and other persons interested in religion are usually alarmed at new scientific truths, and resist them with emotions so highly wrought that they are not only incapable of estimating evidence, but often also have their moral sense impaired, and fight with foul means when fair ones fail. If we reflect carefully on this class of phenomena, we shall see that something besides mere pride of opinion is involved in the struggle. At the bottom of changing theological beliefs there lies something which men perennially value, and for the sake of which they cling to the beliefs as long as possible. That which they value is not itself a matter of belief, but it is a matter of conduct; it is the searching after goodness,–after a higher life than the mere satisfaction of individual desires. All animals seek for fulness of life; but in civilized man this craving has acquired a moral significance, and has become a spiritual aspiration; and this emotional tendency, more or less strong in the human race, we call religious feeling or religion. Viewed in this light, religion is not only something that mankind is never likely to get rid of, but it is incomparably the most noble as well as the most useful attribute of humanity.