There are those who are becoming tired of this childish procedure, those who would really like to know what is going on without having to perfect their Greek and Latin or master the higher mathematics. They would even like to know if it be true, as has been claimed, that the attempt to reconcile the omnipotence of God with human free will and responsibility has always been found scientifically impossible--to know if belief in either will or God be in itself unscientific and contrary to mathematics. Probably they will go on believing in God and free-will anyway--for those who do not have not yet become tired of childish procedures. But it will be with a certain sadness. The man who must hide his faith from his reason in fear of attack, is not a complete or a happy man. Few of us realize how much depends upon our conception of the fundamental truths of physics, how we lean upon what we understand to be the laws underlying the material world. The Scholastics claimed that the existence of God--even the great truths of Christianity--could be demonstrated by reason alone; but few have sufficient philosophical training or inclination to follow such arguments to their end. Science, while it has often claimed to be able to disprove religion, has never claimed to be able to establish either religion in general or any one religion in particular. The most that can be asked of it, I think, is the removal of those barriers which, some time since, it erected in the way of belief in the supernatural. Science has always had its Mendels, its Voltas, its Galvanis, its Ampères, its Pasteurs--men who believed as heartily in God as they believed in his works. But I do not wish to discuss the religion of scientists. It will be enough to show the bearings of recent science upon an antiquated but still pretendedly scientific materialism. So let us chose a single paper by a modern worker--a man comparatively obscure. He will of necessity be comparatively obscure, for no one can be a scientist pure and simple and be widely known unless he has invented a popular mechanical appliance, advertised a cure for some common disease, wandered into a foreign province as a prophet, or had the luck to say something startling--such as, “Man descended from a monkey,” or “Everybody can live to be a hundred years old,”--and even then fame usually takes time to accumulate. Ralph S. Lillie has as yet written no good story. But he has an interesting article, entitled “Physical Indeterminism and Vital Action,” in _Science_ for August 12, 1927.