he
term 'religion' I cannot prevent him. My dictionary defines religion as
'a belief in binding the spirit of man to a supernatural being' and
further includes the idea of duties and rites founded upon such belief.
If that be religion the war between religion and science can never end.
The particular battle ground may change from age to age; it may be
concerned with the mobility of the sun, the origin of species or the
immaculate conception...."

"Well what of it," I remarked, "those things are all relatively
unimportant."

"True" said Spain, "they are, but science has a job in the future that
is vastly important and religion stands in its way."

"And what is that?" I asked.

"It is the job of saving civilization from degenerating into a chaos
besides which the dark ages, medievalism would seem Bericlean by
comparison. As we are headed now we are on the road for a grand smash.
The growing complexities of civilization can only be managed by a human
breed of superior capacity, and instead of breeding a race of better men
we are letting the inborn capacity of the human species regress and
degenerate.

"Natural selection or the survival of the fittest raised us up from
brutes, and civilization stops the operation of that law which made it
possible. Blind charity preserves the rabbitries of stupidity--the
differential birth rate snuffs out the flame of innate intelligence. The
only visible salvation is systematic breeding of superior men; and
against human breeding religion stands garbed in all her mummeries,
shielding behind her wish fancies of immortality, the leering face of
the ape man returned to prowl in the ruins of all we have builded.

"The little priests of religion play in sweet innocence with their hopes
of heaven having not the least conception of the human drift. But the
high priests of religion know very well on which side their bread is
buttered. They know that spook worship thrives only in the soil of
stupidity. They will fight to the last ditch against any serious effort
to breed men for brains. Their creeds are smoothly schemed to block
intelligence in its efforts at biological perpetuation. The fable of a
ghostly paternity of the human species fits their purpose like a glove.
By inoculating the new-born human animal with a fantasy called a soul
they clothe the act of reproduction with a garb of sanctification and
endow all sexual and parental functions with rites so skillfully
ingrained into popul