Title | Why I left the church |
Series Title | Pamphlets for the million; no. 1 |
Creator (LCNAF) |
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Contributor (LCNAF) |
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Publisher | Watts & Company |
Place of Creation (TGN) |
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Date | 1912 |
Subject.Topical (LCSH) |
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Subject.Name (LCNAF) |
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Genre (AAT) |
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Language | English |
Type (DCMI) |
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Original Item Extent | 46 pages; 19 cm. |
Original Item Location | BX4668.3.M33A3 1912 |
Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b8304505~S11 |
Original Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/scpamp |
Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
Repository URL | http://libraries.uh.edu/branches/special-collections |
Use and Reproduction | This item is in the public domain and may be used freely. |
File Name | index.cpd |
Title | Image 23 |
Format (IMT) |
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File Name | uhlib_5792348_022.jpg |
Transcript | WHY I LEFT THE CHURCH 23 the present century—has been pressed intc the service of spiritualist philosophers. But, if there is one point on which science has shaken the confidence of men in traditional teaching, it is on this question of the possession by man of an immaterial soul. Metaphysics is, from the nature of the case, the ultimate court of appeal in such a question; the crude assertion that scientists reject the soul because the microscope, the skio- graph, or the scalpel has never revealed it, is one of the choice expressions invented by theologians, who never read scientists, for the satisfaction of their people, whom they will not allow to read them. Neither literally not metaphorically is it a correct statement of the case. The truth is that there are twTo forces at work in modern physical science, which proceed satisfactorily until wTe come to human psychology, and which the scientist is naturally loth to relinquish at this point until the gravest possible reasons are shown for respecting the immunity claimed for it. On the one hand we have the law of unity or parsimony, the tendency to restrict as far as possible the number of ultimate factors of the universe; this is a natural protest of a sounder scientific spirit against the reckless multiplication of forces and principles of less enlightened ages, when all different sets of phenomena were attributed at once to radically distinct principles, and supposed to be explained. On the other hand, there is the law of evolution—the most brilliant discovery of the nineteenth century—which has shed so marvellous a light on the past history of the world, and which now only encounters serious v |