The dissolvent and destructive aspect of science is not less important. The first to present it in high relief were the physical sciences and astronomy. All the ancient superstitions about the trembling of the earth, eclipses, etc., which were a constant occasion of religious exaltation, are destroyed, or nearly so, even among the populace. Geology has overturned with a single stroke the traditions of most religions. Physics has done away with miracles. The same almost may be said of meteorology, which is so recent and has such a brilliant future. God is still to a man of the people too often the sender of rain and good weather, the Indra of the Hindus. A priest told me the other day, in the best faith in the world, that the prayers of his parishioners had brought the country three days of sunshine. In a religious town if rain falls the day of a religious procession, and stops shortly before the time of setting out, the people unhesitatingly believe that a miracle has been performed. Sailors, who depend so entirely on atmospheric perturbations, are more inclined to superstition. The minute the weather can be more or less accurately foretold and guarded against, all these superstitions are doomed. It is thus that fear of thunder is rapidly subsiding at the present day; this fear formed an important factor in the formation of the ancient religions. By inventing the lightning-rod, Franklin did more to destroy superstition than the most active propaganda could have done. [Sidenote: Experiment in miracles.] As M. Renan has remarked, we might even in our day demonstrate scientifically the non-existence of miraculous interference in the affairs of this world and the inefficiency of requests to God to modify the natural course of things; one might, for example, minister to patients according to the same methods, in two adjoining rooms of a hospital; for the one set of patients a priest might pray, and one might see whether the prayer would appreciably modify the means of recovery. The result of this sort of experiment on the existence of a special providence is moreover easy to foretell, and it is doubtful whether any educated priest would lend himself to it. [Sidenote: Religion and physiology and psychology.] The sciences of physiology and psychology have explained to us in a natural way a multitude of phenomena of the nervous system which we were forced until recently to attribute to the marvelous, or to trickery, or to divine influence, or to the devil. [Sidenote: Religion and history.]