VII The ‘Religion’ of the Modern Age

This supposition is also absurd. Although there are certain causes for the tendencies to commit crimes, they are purely peripheral, and their real reason is man’s own decision to launch himself on this course. Without control over decision-making, the criminal mentality will never be eradicated. For this reason, it is futile to expect that moral offenders and criminals may be cured of their deficiencies in hospitals, just as other patients are treated for physical diseases. Crime is an act of will, whereas diseases are a material happening. Our surgeons can perform surgery upon matter, but they cannot operate upon the human will. They cannot, therefore, control it. The writer himself is forced to admit that the complexity of life’s issues will always place a true science of man beyond the reach of humanity. This avowal notwithstanding, he hopes (we think, in vain) that man will be able to attain to this. He says: In short, the slow progress of the knowledge of the human being, as compared with the splendid ascension of physics, astronomy, chemistry, and mechanics, is due to our ancestors’ lack of leisure, to the complexity of the subject, and to the structure of our mind. Those obstacles are fundamental. There is no hope of eliminating them. They will always have to be overcome at the cost of strenuous effort. The knowledge of ourselves will never attain the elegant simplicity, the abstractness, and the beauty of physics. The factors that have retarded its development are not likely to vanish. We must realize clearly that the science of man is the most difficult of all sciences. (pp. 22-23) All thinkers admit this fact regarding the human sciences. Julian Huxley writes: However—and this is vital—the fading of God does not mean the end of religion. God’s disappearance is in the strictest sense of the word a theological process: and while theologies change, the religious impulses which gave them birth persist. The disappearance of God means a recasting of religion, and