t the mathematical dogmas are more
comprehensible. The law of inverse squares is as incomprehensible to the
common man as the Athanasian creed. It is not that science is free from
legends, witchcraft, miracles, biographic boostings of quacks as heroes
and saints, and of barren scoundrels as explorers and discoverers. On
the contrary, the iconography and hagiology of Scientism are as copious
as they are mostly squalid. But no student of science has yet been
taught that specific gravity consists in the belief that Archimedes
jumped out of his bath and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse
shouting Eureka, Eureka, or that the law of inverse squares must be
discarded if anyone can prove that Newton was never in an orchard in his
life. When some unusually conscientious or enterprising bacteriologist
reads the pamphlets of Jenner, and discovers that they might have been
written by an ignorant but curious and observant nurserymaid, and could
not possibly have been written by any person with a scientifically
trained mind, he does not feel that the whole edifice of science has
collapsed and crumbled, and that there is no such thing as smallpox.
It may come to that yet; for hygiene, as it forces its way into our
schools, is being taught as falsely as religion is taught there; but in
mathematics and physics the faith is still kept pure, and you may take
the law and leave the legends without suspicion of heresy. Accordingly,
the tower of the mathematician stands unshaken whilst the temple of the
priest rocks to its foundation.

THE RELIGIOUS ART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Creative Evolution is already a religion, and is indeed now
unmistakeably the religion of the twentieth century, newly arisen
from the ashes of pseudo-Christianity, of mere scepticism, and of
the soulless affirmations and blind negations of the Mechanists and
Neo-Darwinians. But it cannot become a popular religion until it has its
legends, its parables, its miracles. And when I say popular I do not
mean apprehensible by villagers only. I mean apprehensible by Cabinet
Ministers as well. It is unreasonable to look to the professional
politician and administrator for light and leading in religion. He
is neither a philosopher nor a prophet: if he were, he would be
philosophizing and prophesying, and not neglecting both for the drudgery
of practical government. Socrates and Coleridge did not remain soldiers,
nor could John Stuart Mill remain the representative of