A reconciliation of this kind may soften the conflict for a while. But it cannot for long disguise the fact that it is based on a denial of the premises of faith. If the method of science has the last word, then revelation is reduced from a means of arriving at absolute certainty to a flash of insight which can be trusted if and when it is verified by science. Under such terms of peace, the religious [p125] experiences of mankind become merely one of the instruments of knowledge, like the microscope and the binomial theorem, usable now and then, but subject to correction, and provisional. They no longer yield complete, ultimate, invincible truths. They yield an hypothesis. But the religious life of most men has not, until this day at least, been founded upon hypotheses which, when accurately stated, included a coefficient of probable error. 5. _Gospels of Science_ Because its prestige is so great, science has been acclaimed as a new revelation. Cults have attached themselves to scientific hypotheses as fortune-tellers to a circus. A whole series of pseudo-religions have been hastily constructed upon such dogmas as the laws of nature, mechanism, Darwinian evolution, Lamarckian evolution, and psychoanalysis. Each of these cults has had its own Decalogue of Science founded at last, it was said, upon certain knowledge. These cults are an attempt to fit the working theories of science to the ordinary man’s desire for personal salvation. They do violence to the integrity of scientific thought and they cannot satisfy the layman’s need to believe. For the essence of the scientific method is a determination to investigate phenomena without conceding anything to naive human prejudices. Therefore, genuine men of science shrink from the attempts of poets, prophets, and popular lecturers to translate the current scientific theory into the broad and passionate dogmas of popular faith. As a matter of common honesty they know that no theory has the kind of absolute verity which [p126] popular faith would attribute to it. As a matter of prudence they fear these popular cults, knowing quite well that freedom of inquiry is endangered when men become passionately loyal to an idea, and stake their personal pride and hope of happiness upon its vindication. In the light of human experience, men of science have learned what happens when investigators are not free to discard any theory without breaking some dear old lady’s heart. Their theories are not the kind of revelation which the old lady is seeking, and their beliefs are relative and provisional to a degree which must seem utterly alien and bewildering to her. Here, for example, is the conclusion of some lectures by one of the greatest living astronomers. I have italicized the words which the dear old lady would not be likely to hear in a sermon: