Religion and Science
7. The ‘Religion’ of the Modern Age
~ 114 ~
immediately take place. Matter would lose its
supremacy. Mental activities would become
as important as physiological ones. The study
of moral, aesthetic, and religious functions,
would appear as indispensable as that of
mathematics,
physics,
and
chemistry.
Hygienists would be asked why they concern
themselves exclusively with the prevention of
organic diseases, and not with that of mental
and nervous disturbances, why they pay no
attention to spiritual health — Pathologists
would be induced to study the lesions of the
humours as well as those of the organs, to
take into account the influence of the mental
upon the tissues, and vice versa (p. 256).
Thus, according to Dr. Carrel’s diagnosis, the causes
of human suffering stem from the fact that the
sciences of inanimate matter have become far more
developed than the science of man, which is still in
a rudimentary state. He sees this as one of the
greatest catastrophes ever suffered by humanity. If
black, malodorous charcoal can be converted into
lovely colour, and ungainly lumps of iron into
shapely, moving machines, man and his society can
