Wherever peace has come between science and religion, one finds a
realm where the boundaries between the two are acknowledged and
respected. Ask _now_ the question, What makes it rain? There is a
scientific answer in terms of natural laws concerning atmospheric
pressure and condensation. There is also a religious answer, since
behind all laws and through them runs the will of God. These two
replies are distinct, they move in different realms, and are held
together without inconsistency. As Sabatier put it, "Since God is the
final cause of all things, he is not the scientific explanation of any
one thing." In how many realms where once confusion reigned between
the believers in the gods and the seekers after natural laws, is peace
now established! Rain and sunrise, the tides and the eclipses, the
coming of the seasons and the growing of the crops--for all such
events we have our scientific explanations, and at the same time
through them all the man of religion feels the creative power of God.
Peace reigns in these realms because here _no longer do we force
religious answers on scientific questions or scientific answers on
religious questions_. Evidently the old Deuteronomic law is the
solution of the conflict between science and religion: "Cursed be he
that removeth his neighbor's landmark" (Deut. 27:17).
II
Left thus in the negative, however, this might seem to mean that we
are to divide our minds into air-tight compartments, and allow no
influences from one to penetrate another. But science and religion do
tremendously affect each other, and no honest dealing ever can
endeavor to prevent their mutual reaction. Our position is not thus
negative; it affirms a positive and most important truth. Life has
many aspects; science, art, religion, approach it from different
angles, with different interests and purposes; and while they do
_influence_ each other, they are not _identical_ and each has solid
standing in its own right. When science has grown domineering, as
though her approach to reality were the only one and her conclusions
all of truth, the poets have had as much distaste for her as have the
theologians. Shelley, who called himself an atheist, had no interest
in religion's conflict with the extreme claims of science; yet listen
to his aroused and flaming language as he pleads the case for poetry
against her: "Poetry is something divine.... It is the perfect and
consummate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odor and
color of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, and
the form and splendor of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and
corruption. What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship--what were
the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit; what were our
consolations on this side of the grave--and what were our aspirations
beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those
eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not
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