If we are inclined to write all this off as merely Communist
propaganda, we shall be making a profound mistake. We
might do well to remember that Joseph Butler, in the Ad-
vertisement prefixed to the first edition of The Analogy of
Religion, wrote: 'It is come, I know not how, to be taken
for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so
much as a subject of enquiry; but that it is now at length
discovered to be fictitious.'

It is important to realise that in this summary of some of
the influences of a scientific view, we have passed far be-
yond mere technology or gadgeteering. We may begin
there, because that is about as far as the man-in-the-
street, or the young apprentice at his lathe, can state his
beliefs. But his unrecognized convictions go much deeper.
For he knows that science grows, even though he may have
no personal knowledge of any of its fundamental principles;
and he knows that scientific controversy nearly always issues
in universal agreement, frequently very quickly. Science
becomes the cohesive force in modern society, the ground
on which may be built a secure way of life for man and for
communities. It was an American sociologist ¹² who wrote:

This is why, if one wants to understand the culture of the
United States, one must not look at its departments of econ-
omics, sociology or politics, important as they are, but at its
universal education in the natural sciences and their skills, its
agricultural colleges, technological institutes and research
laboratories.

We may be tempted to smile at a certain naiveté in all this.
But it springs from convictions much deeper than we some-
times recognize. For it must seem to many that within
science there is such understanding of man, and his place
in the scheme of things, such power to create and to destroy,

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