one cannot help but think that if our present rate of
progress meets no serious obstacle, then in another five hundred years,
the attitude of awe of Jeans and Eddington towards the vastness of our
universe will be held in some similar position to which Jeans and
Eddington now hold the misguided conception of Halley's comet in the
year 1456. The mind of man is just beginning to emerge from its
swaddling clothes and we cannot assume to judge what its broadest
capabilities may be. Certain great modern minds, therefore, when they
contemplate this vastness of astrophysics are apt to dwell a bit too
literally on the "music of the heavenly spheres," and under the
influence of these celestial harmonies fall into the trance of
scientific asceticism. Men who can no longer seriously hold to a belief
in an anthropomorphic god, the soul and immortality are apt to allow
themselves when in this mood to emotionalize their knowledge; and these
same men are the ones who would in their scientific endeavors be the
first to eliminate all emotions from their reasoning efforts in their
laboratories. One seems justified, therefore, in stating that this
conception of "cosmic consciousness" is but another instance of the mere
illusions of a craving heart.

Discussing the question as to whether science and religion conflict, the
physicist Professor Bazzoni, of the University of Pennsylvania, in a
recent work "Energy and Matter," makes the following pointed comment:
"Some scientists resort to metaphysics and make contact with a kind of
mysticism which may be taken for a religious belief at precisely that
point where ignorance prevents further progress along sound scientific
lines. The primitive medicine man appealed to the gods to explain the
precipitation of rain and the phase changes of the moon, and some modern
scientists appeal to metaphysics and mysticism to explain the limits of
the infinite and the nature of electricity."

He further cautions theologians against placing undue emphasis on the
opinions of scientists when they express their minds on religious
topics, and he remarks: "They (the laity) should realize that in the
spiritual field the opinion of an eminent scientist has exactly the
same weight as the opinion of any other cultivated and thoughtful
individual."

When the scientist examines with the impartial mind of the laboratory
the science of the origin of religious beliefs and delves into the
complicated intricacies of religi