Where Science and Religion MeetPalmer, William Scott
Religion
Where Science and Religion Meet
Palmer, William Scott
Religion and science
By means of this hand he projected into space the powers of his body and
his mind. He began, no doubt, with sticks and stones; he went on to
strings; and from sticks and stones and strings he passed to telescopes
with which he reached new stars, spectroscopes with which he saw what
they were made of, telegraphs and telephones through which his speech
and hearing stretched out from land to land, and destructive machines by
which his delicate fingers shattered and blasted with the power of a
thousand storms. These things and more he has done; and all the tools he
has used are extensions of both his body and his mind. So too are the
industrial machines by which he manufactures (note the word) what his
newly-complicated needs demand of clothes and food and furniture and the
like. So too are the astounding machines which make for him other and
different machines. And everywhere we see that in the advance of his
tool-devising he draws nearer to making those which will work either
without his aid or with very little of it. His tools grow more and more
automatic, more and more saving of the labour of mind. He makes, you may
say, artificial habit-bearers, motor-structures by which the devices of
his mind are carried into action independent of his mind, as other
devices are through his nervous system and his muscular limbs. Thus he
follows the example set him by life in its organizing of living tools.
And we ought to tell ourselves (parenthetically) at this point that the
one reasonable and worthy use of all our machinery is just this—to
follow the example of life not only in the actual organizing but in the
purpose and meaning of organization. We ought to acknowledge to
ourselves that unless our machinery liberates the mind and spirit of man
to serve better and more freely his spiritual needs it will of a
certainty enslave him. At present, because most of us are in the dark as
to the direction in which life strives to conduct us, machinery is used
to emancipate the few and to enslave the many. We do not know what we
are doing, we do not understand what the primacy of spirit means or
should mean for us all. We do not know how we ought to grow, every one
of us, in the natural, that is, in the spiritual way.
Why do I venture to say that in the spiritual way we _ought_ to grow?
And what in fact is that spiritual way? Do life and experience point out
the way and emphasize the 'ought'? Here we come to the gist of our whole
inquiry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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