God and the World: A Survey of Thought

The leaders of the scientific thought of last century would have been vastly surprised if they could have foreseen the results of the investigations which were to be made into t...

We have still to see how the last of the difficulties of which we have spoken was treated. It was a difficulty which could not be regarded with indifference. For what would it a...

We have spoken of what science has recently been doing in the investigation of the constitution of matter; we have now to talk of its researches into the nature of Life.

We shall not exaggerate if we say that the chief interest aroused by these discoveries was a theological interest. Of course the men of science were keenly concerned to understa...

It must not be imagined that all the arguments were on one side. Far from it. The defenders of the old faith were many, and not the least able of them were drawn from the ranks...

Never had there been greater unanimity of opinion in England in regard to the religious interpretation of the world than that which prevailed at the beginning of the nineteenth...

The position, as we have described it, was that which may be said to have existed up to about twenty years ago. Since then much new light has come. Indeed, Lord Kelvin, speaking...

But though Materialism had to go, there was a time when it seemed to many by no means unlikely that Agnosticism might have to be accepted as its substitute. And if that had been...

We find it hard to realise that not so very long ago the steam-engine and the electric telegraph were unknown; and we are right when we say that life must have worn a very diffe...