The name is absent

Religion                71

as an influence on the culture of the time. That is a state-
ment which may be supported or challenged with a good
deal of confidence on either side. One indubitable fact is
that there is a far more widespread apprehension than for-
merly of the distinction between religion and the institutions
that promote it; also between religion and the traditions
and doctrines which have been regarded as essential to its
expression. Scientific hypotheses and methods are the most
active constituent elements in the “intellectual climate” of
today, and these the modern man breathes into his system,
as his father absorbed other theories, dogmas, and methods
from the circumambient medium of his day. This climate,
however, has affected other forms of culture than religion.
No idea has captivated the modern mind more completely
than that of scientific research. Universities have been
transformed by the application of scientific method. The
sciences have been given the place of primacy; when psy-
chology in the name of science makes wide claims, philoso-
phy, that ancient mistress, is almost put on her defence;
as for the humanities they need apologists; theology ap-
pears to many to be an antique. Consequently the genera-
tion who have been so completely exposed to the atmos-
phere of science, and who breathe the optimism of discovery,
have unconsciously assumed, in an uncritical frame of mind,
that her methods and results are universally valid. But
this self-confidence is on the wane, and while science has
brought her critical method to bear upon religion, as upon
every other domain, the result has been to clarify rather
than to destroy. As Hoffding, the Danish philosopher,
said: “The religious consciousness is always inclined to drag
about with it traditions which have neither religious, in-
tellectual, nor ethical significance, dead values which no hu-
man being can really experience, but which it does not dare

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