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This volume purports to be a review of the present relationship between science and religion, its avowed aim being to solve the conflict existing between them. The author hardly succeeds in the aim of instituting a harmonious relationship, for his main conclusion is that both science and religion are valid in entirely separate fields. As might be expected from a writer of such scientific standing and with such well-known power of exposition, the book is written in an exceedingly interesting and charming way, while the exposition of scientific views is both clear and authoritative. The part on religion, however, is much more subjective and possesses little more than the value of a personal confession. Much of this part of the book is reactionary and even sentimental.
Whatever else religious feeling may purport to be, it is surely a psychological process, and we therefore turn with expectation to the chapter on the Psychology of Religion. Here the reader will be very disappointed, for this is by far the weakest part of the book. The author appears to be unaware of the extensive contributions to knowledge that have been made on this subject. After some neuro-physiological platitudes, he devotes a couple of pages to the Unconscious, making here a quite fictitious division between what he calls 'primary unconscious' and 'Freudian unconscious'. His acquaintance with psycho-analysis appears to be derived from what he calls Dr. Northridge's 'well-balanced book', the superficial quality of which was pointed out in a recent number of this JOURNAL (Vol. VI, p. 62). Nothing is said about the bearing of the theory of the unconscious on the problems of religion, nor is any indication given of what illumination it has already cast in this direction.
Perhaps the most valuable part of the book is the exceedingly clear and rich exposition of modern physics, presented by Professor Thomson's son in three appendices entitled: 'The Theory of Relativity', 'Atomicity and the Quantu