A lecture delivered in the Physics Amphitheatre of the Rice Institute, April 15, 1937, by James George Needham, Ph.D., Litt.D., Sc.D., Professor of Entomology and Limnology, Emeritus, at Cornell University

Needham, James G. (James George), 1868-1956

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THE COMMON GROUND OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION’ UDGING by all that we now know concerning the history J of our species upon the earth, our science and religion had in the beginning a common origin. Both developed as a result of efforts to understand and interpret the order of nature. Primitive man had all the instincts that  we now possess, including the “divine instinct” of curiosity, the urge to find out about things. This is one of the distinguishing peculiarities of our spe- cies. T h e  human mind is so constituted that i t  must have explanations. Any explanation, whether correct or  not, is better than none a t  all. Effects must have causes assigned to them; and in the beginning there was little distinction between science and religion in the shaping of explanations. Modern knowledge was lacking. T h e  first man on the earth could only know the things that he found out for him- self. H e  was confronted with a world full of mysteries- mysteries of many kinds. There were events occurring every day that had no visible causes. The re  was the blowing of the winds. Whence did they come? Whither did they go? Why did they shift, and wax and wane? Why blow in gentle zephyrs now, and again in terrifying storms? Overhead were the stars varying in brilliancy and in constancy, some fixed in position, others moving in definite companies, others straying alone. W h a t  did their position and their move- ments mean? ‘A public lecture delivered in the Physics Amphitheatre of the Rice In- stitute, April 15, 1937. 2 82 Common Ground of Science and Religion 283 Primitive man knew himself as a causative agent, and he conceived other causative agents like himself, only more powerful. H e  personified the winds and named them : Boreus was the north wind; Austrus was the south wind; Vesperus was the west wind, etc. And on the margins of old maps in our libraries one may still see pictures of these mythical persons with roundly puff ed-out cheeks blowing in opposition toward the center. H e  personified the constellations and named them-Orion, Pleiades, and the others. Neptune ruled the waves and Jupiter hurled the thunderbolts. These have been called man’s “baby-names” for the forces of na- ture. Such were the results of his first attempts a t  explaining natural phenomena. Then there were casualties betimes that called for ex- planation. There were tempests and floods, volcanic erup- tions and earthquakes, pestilences and famines. There  was sickness and there were deaths. All these things were hurt- ful, capricious, and irresistible. In  the face of such calamities “Help wanted” was, and is, and ever will be, the cry of the whole world. Again he conceived of causative agents like himself, but invisible, free-ranging, and all-powerful spirits. Like him- self they were capable of anger and of vengeance ; capable, also, of kindness and of mercy. H e  conceived of them as persons and often he called them gods. Among them were many kinds of gods, good and evil. There  were malignant gods that must be placated with gifts to  satisfy their greed, with rites to  allay their anger, and with favors to  cajole their malevolence. Because they could inflict so great injury, these evil gods were worshipped most, and thus fear came to  be the chief characteristic of primitive religion. But there were also kindly gods, that  had conferred great blessings, such as the knowledge of plants and animals fit 284 Public Lecture for  food and clothing, and of plants and other earth-prod- ucts useful for  healing. These gods must be worshipped and besought to  continue their favors. Some of our American Indians had attained to the idea of one beneficent god, the Great Spirit; and there is a particularly fine prayer to him quoted in Lindquist’s The Red Man in North America, which runs as follows: W e  are grateful for thy favors. W e  are grateful for all that has been given us. Continue to bestow these favors and withdraw them not; thy children live by thy bounty and without it we cannot live. Con- tinue to listen and inhale this sweet incense as we speak to thee; forget us not, for we are here by thy power begotten, and without thy favor we shall despair. T h e  great hardships of life that so dominated the thinking of primitive man were in two principal categories as to fatality. There were first the things that must inevitably happen and that nothing could prevent. All that could be done about these things was to seek to foreknow them; and to  that end he invented the methods of divination and au- gury, oracles, and prophecy. Then there were the evils that would come unless something were done to forestall them. F o r  dealing with these, he developed magic and ritual. H e  had lucky days, and lucky numbers, and talismans, and fet- ishes, and charms in thousands, many of which still linger in our midst, though taken f a r  less seriously now. H e  thus shaped his practices in accordance with his scanty knowledge. His  religion was consistent with his science. These early efforts a t  understanding and adjustment are by no means to be despised. They are first steps upward in the sphere of mind, and they are peculiarly human. Then there were mysteries of a more personal nature. When sickness and death were all about him he asked him- self hard questions-questions for which more modern science has no answer. Whence had he come? Whither Common Ground of Science and Religion 285 would he go?  Hi s  body would decay, but what of the spirit that governs? And to these questions he framed such an- swers as his limited knowledge and experience would allow. “Religion reduced to its lowest terms is belief in the order of nature controlled by mind.” This is an indispensable belief, common to all mankind. In  the beginning the control was believed to be simple and direct. Man conceived the controlling spirits to be like himself in their needs and in their passions-only fa r  surpassing him in their powers. They work wonders and miracles, and these are no breach of natural law so long as that law is not understood. They are only manifestations of power. T h e  study of nature removes many occurrences from the realm of miracle, revealing proximal forces and the laws under which they operate. T h e  mind in control is removed ever farther from the immediate event. T h e  understandings first arrived a t  require amendment. A belief which has gained currency, and has long served as an anchorage for the mind in the midst of the mysteries of life, is slow to change. It is often fa r  easier to  make new discoveries than to alter old beliefs. New ideas lack the support of tradition. Dr. D. S. Jordan has said “Much that we have called reli- gion is merely the debris of our grandfathers’ science.” T h e  study of any of the great religions of the world will abun- dantly attest to this. T h e  simple panaceas of magic, so satisfying to the prim- itive mind, with the progress of knowledge cease to afford relief. T h e  mystic control vanishes, but the weakness of the flesh remains. T h e  mystery of birth lies behind us. T h e  certainty of death is before us. Life’s “fitful fever” runs its swift course. T h e  ancient question comes anew “If a man die, shall he live again?”, and, whether or  not we insist on an answer, we must as social beings find some way of meeting 286 Public Lecture the exigencies of life and of making adjustment to them. W e  are ushered upon the stage of life through crises that we know naught of, and we are removed by forces we cannot stay. There is no other recourse than an appeal to a higher power which seems to rule eternally, and of which the high lights of our little lives seem to afford passing glimpses. Religion is universal among men because of the univer- sality of human need. Kipling has expressed this need in Kabir as follows : M y  brother kneels (so saith Kabir) T o  brass and stone in heathenwise, But in my brother’s voice I hear My own unanswered agonies. His God is as his fates assign; His  prayer is all the world’s-and mine. Doing came before thinking-comes before thinking still. The  crises of life had to be met with scant knowledge of their nature and causes-how very scanty is our knowledge still! Observations were made and judgments spoken and traditions became established before science had made much progress. I t  took our species a long time to learn how to use its natural environment effectively. T h e  gift of language set us apart  from other animals. W e  are so like them in our physical being and so different in attainments as to seem like another order of beings. T h e  differences began with lan- guage, with words as symbols of experience, making it pos- sible to detach knowledge from the individual and to convey the results of experience to others. Ours is the only species that profits by the gains of the exceptional individual. Lan- guage is what makes this possible ; and when language began to be written, making the gains permanent, then the rapid increase of knowledge began, and the cumulative nature of our social progress became apparent. Common Ground of Science and Religion 287 Science and religion developed a long way together. And then in a more critical age, when science began to rely on physics, and religion on metaphysics, they split apart. While religion is one, creeds are many. Religious observances are pure and simple products of the folkways, developed dif- ferently among different peoples to meet social needs that are common to all alike. W e  are not born Catholics or  Protestants or  Mohammedans or  Buddhists; we are made so by our early environment. Our religious observances are largely due to  accident of birthplace and breeding. Where- fore it is not becoming to anyone to take overmuch pride in his own peculiar pattern of them. Science walks by sight, but can see only a little way; and each glimpse into a new field reveals infinite unexplored reaches beyond. Wha t  the eye of science discovers, affects the concepts that  have grown up with our religion in two ways: first, it discovers laws. Events that have been called miracles it shows to occur in accordance with these laws. While not revealing ultimate causes it removes the causes ever farther and farther from the events, and makes the events look less and less like the work of human hands. Second, it discovers processes of an intricacy of which the ancient miracle-mongers never dreamed. And in this latter day it has become clearly apparent, as might well have been anticipated, that  some of the early explanations of the earth and its phenomena, that have come down to us out of an- tiquity attached t o  our religion, are based on faulty observa- tions and lack of knowledge. There  is, for example, abun- dant and convincing evidence that evolution is and has been the method of nature: but it is only a method and not a cause. Fifty years ago good old Dr. Newton Bateman, then President of Knox College, calm, dispassionate, devout, and 288 Public Lecture unafraid, was saying to us in a chapel lecture “Evolution is the method by which the builder wrought.” I t  does not explain causes. For  most of us the uniformity of operation in nature’s laws and the universal existence of order will imply a power in control: for inert things do not order themselves. T h e  existence of things eternally valuable in human life will lead us to believe that that power has not made them merely for a brief flicker here and then for extinction. This is the field of faith. With all our modern aids our eyes cannot see so far. Science and Religion agree in this that  they both delight in the beauty of the world. Both delight to discover beauty, order and fitness; and it is everywhere evident even from the greatest unto the least of creation. David saw it in the starry night and exclaimed : When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What  is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? And the revelations of the telescope that have so magni- fied the power of our vision have magnified the wonders of the heavens in like proportions. Jesus pointed i t  out in the glorious array of the lilies of the field; and the poet, Thom- son, saw it in the opening bud, and thus expressed i t :  But who can paint Like Nature? Can imagination boast Amid its gay creation, hues like hers? O r  can it mix them with that matchless skill, And lose them in each other, as appears In every bud that blows. An early British naturalist, Hogarth,  saw it in dried seed capsules of plants and wrote to  his friend Ellis: “I have gathered some little seed pods or vessels that show the Common Ground of Science and Religion 289 pleasure Nature seems to  take in super-adding elegance of form to all her works. When next you come to see me we will sit down together-nay, kneel down if you will-and look a t  them.” T h e  microscope opened a new world to the eyes of the observer, the world of infinitely small things, revealing new wonders as great as those of the heavens. T h e  early micro- scopists expressed their wonder in the phrase “Natura max- ime miranda in minimis.’) No wonder that the new vision has brought changes in our thinking, since before this most precious instrument had been invented, the elements of organic structure and the beginning processes in organic development could not have been known. T o  me there is nothing else in this world so wonderful as the single cell in which each living being takes its origin, the fertilized egg cell. It is a microscopic bit of organized protoplasm, appearing well-nigh structureless, and with nothing in i t  to show what it is t o  become. Yet we know that everything that can come out of it is already poten- tially present on it. T h a t  man should start in this estate is the profoundest revelation of the microscope’s bearing on our religious thinking. Where can be found such evidence of unity as that  which the microscope has revealed? One common substance, protoplasm ; one common unit of struc- ture and of function, the cell; one mode of increase, cell division; one mode of mixing strains, cross fertilization: all these basic things common to organic beings-plants and animals and man. So man starts a t  this common level and all the gains of all the ages he must for himself acquire. This is a stubborn fact, of most profound significance. T h e  initial cell divides and becomes an embryo. It takes on forms that are first 290 Public Lecture like lower and then like higher animals in plan of structure. It races down the road of ancestral history, never going astray though countless paths diverge. I t  increases to a host, and concurrently it differentiates into groups. T h e  cells work together, massing themselves here, cleaving apart  there, like well-drilled battalions to  form body parts in infinite variety until the whole finally assumes human form. It will exhibit in the end in various combinations the char- acters of its ancestors. This is human evolution, the evolution of the individual. I t  is fact, not theory. Every student in the biological labora- tory may see it with his own eyes. Fo r  thirty years it was my privilege to show this development in the lower animals to college freshmen. In all that time I never have witnessed it myself without renewed wonder. This microscopic thing, the fertilized egg cell, is for  me more than a wondrous miracle. It visualizes the eternal order of the universe be- fore which I stand in awe. T h a t  science and religion must have a common ground is determined by two fixed and inescapable conditions : first, science and religion grow out of the common earth;  and, second, their concepts are alike products of the human mind. I t  is a common earth that sustains us all, whatever our beliefs. W e  are earth-born. Out of the dust of the ground we are remade every day of our lives, and unto dust our bodies will return. On the earth we live; by it we live; of it we are. Earth-born joys and gladness, and earth-born woes and perils, attend our way through life. I t  is the com- mon lot to be born to  helplessness in infancy, to grow and develop and die ; to possess an animal body made of the same parts as are other animal bodies and performing the same functions and to  run the same course through life. Did not Job remind us that “man is born like a wild ass’s colt.” Each Common Ground of Science and Religion 291 must start a t  the common level. Each must accept and use the materials of his physical as well as his social heritage. T h e  human mind is built on a firm base of physiologic responses that take care of the operations having to do with the upkeep of our bodies, and on a natural endowment of sound instincts that  insure the continuance of our species. So much nature has done for us; this is the part  of our educa- tion with which we are  born. I t  is organized in our nervous system, and is as much a part  of us as are  hands and feet. But there is one thing more, a thing that differentiates us from all other species. W e  have been endowed with “a mind that looks before and after,’’ that considers causes and effects, that  reflects upon the consequences of acts-not only the immediate consequences, but also those that are remote. Morality comes in here. This is where it was given to man, in the words of the ancient explanatory story of Genesis,  “to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Science comes in here, with the seeking after causes and methods. Religion comes in here with the seeking after the origin and destiny and meaning of life. All these began together with the earliest exercise of these gifts of the mind to us. Finally, we may note that science and religion have a t  least one common purpose, and that is the knowledge of the truth and its application to human welfare. They may pursue different methods, and both may betimes grope blindly, but their aim is one. And the chief glory of our species may be found in the devotion and self-sacrifice with which the devotees of both science and religion pursue their labors. It takes a poet adequately to express the religious feelings of a naturalist. Wordsworth has done it in his Lines  on T in te rn  Abbey,  as follows : 292 Public Lecture I have learned T o  look on Nature,  not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes T h e  still, sad music of humanity, Nor  harsh, nor grating, though of ample power T o  chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far  more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that  impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that  we behold From this green earth;  of all the mighty world Of eye and ear, both what they half create And what they perceive; well pleased to recognize In nature and the language of the sense, T h e  anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, T h e  guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my mortal being. There  is no more harmful idea abroad in the land than that science and religion are enemies. They are both imper- fect instruments of the desires of our better nature. JAMES GEORGE NEEDHAM. 

The common ground of science and religion

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The common ground of science and religion

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