Nevertheless,
the stars have been counted and the astronomer has survived. This
nursery legend is the child's version of those superstitions which would
have strangled in their cradles the young sciences now adolescent and
able to take care of themselves, and which, no longer daring to attack
these, are watching with hostile aspect the rapid growth of the
comparatively new science of man.
The real difficulty of the student of nature at this time is to reconcile
absolute freedom and perfect fearlessness with that respect for the past,
that reverence, for the spirit of reverence wherever we find it, that
tenderness for the weakest fibres by which the hearts of our
fellow-creatures hold to their religious convictions, which will make the
transition from old belief to a larger light and liberty an interstitial
change and not a violent mutilation.
I remember once going into a little church in a small village some miles
from a great European capital. The special object of adoration in this
humblest of places of worship was a bambino, a holy infant, done in wax,
and covered with cheap ornaments such as a little girl would like to
beautify her doll with. Many a good Protestant of the old Puritan type
would have felt a strong impulse to seize this "idolatrous" figure and
dash it to pieces on the stone floor of the little church.
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