While Adelard’s English friends displayed no bigoted opposition to the reception of Saracen science, the question of science and religion is raised in another connection in the very first of the questions concerning nature which the nephew puts to his uncle. The nephew inquires the reason for the growth of herbs from earth, asking, “To what else can you attribute this save to the marvelous effect of the marvelous divine will?” Adelard retorts that no doubt it is the Creator’s will, but that the operation is also not without a natural reason. This attitude of independent scientific investigation is characteristic of Adelard. Again in the fourth chapter when the nephew displays a tendency to ascribe all effects to God indifferently as cause, Adelard objects. He insists that he is detracting in no way from God, whom he grants to be the source of all things, but he holds that nature “is not confused and without system” and that “human science should be given a hearing upon those points which it has covered.” On the other hand he has no desire in the present treatise to overstep the bounds of natural science and enter the field of theology. When his nephew towards the close wishes him to go on and discuss the problem of God’s existence and nature, he wisely responds, “You are now broaching a question to me where it is easier to disprove what isn’t so than to demonstrate what is,”[50] and that they had better go to bed and leave this big question for another day and another treatise.[51] [Sidenote: Reason versus authority.]