At the outset of this lecture I told
briefly why, in the modern world, we aim to avoid superstition. The true
reason for this aim you now see better than at first I could state that
reason. We have learned, and wisely learned, that the great cause of the
study of nature by scientific methods is one of the principal special
causes to which man can be devoted; for nothing serves more than the
pursuit of the sciences serves to bind into unity the actual work of
human civilization. To this cause of scientific study we have all
learned to be, according to our lights, loyal. But the study of science
makes us averse to the belief in magic arts, in supernatural
interferences, in special providences. The scientific spirit turns from
the legends and the superstitions that in the past have sundered men,
have inflamed the religious wars, have filled the realm of imagination
with good and evil spirits. Turns from these--to what? To a belief in a
merely mechanical reality? To a doctrine that the real world is foreign
to our ideals? To an assurance that life is vain?
No; so to view the mission of the study of science is to view that
mission falsely.
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