RELIGION AND THE INTELLECTUALS
131
who have strayed from Rome, should now return to It m humble
obedience; physically if possible during this present mid-century
year, spiritually in any case.
Just as the issue about the intellectual class has to be placed
in
a larger socio-cultural context, so does the one about religion,
and for much the same reason. That the state and fortunes of
religion cannot be separated from the estate of other large human
affairs
is
recognized
in
effect-but only partially-when we are in–
vited to consider: "Does the present trend imply that the scientific
attitude of mind is being forsaken?" The acknowledgment is partial
since "science" is the only other large human interest mentioned as
needing to be taken into account. But what about the status of
science itself?
If
it is being forsaken, and as far as it
is,
its desertion
as well as the accompanying return to religion supernaturally viewed
must have
its
particular "causal" conditioning. Is it not reasonable
to suppose that as far as science is possessed and enjoyed by a
relatively small group of "intellectuals" (even when those engaged In
scientific pursuits are included as they must be), it is exposed to
the ebb as well as to the flow of activities and interests which are
neither religious nor scientific?
It is a well-known fact that the high tide of general esteem
of science was in the period usually called Victorian: a period that
may roughly be dated as that preceding the First World War; while
the ebb of its lauded position began with the Second World War,
and has become acute (and seemingly chronic as well) since the
defeat of Germany and its allies has demonstrated that the alliance
between the older democracies and the U.S.S.R. was external, super–
ficial, formal. The cleavage of our one physical world is into two
opposed worlds. Between them even the communication that is a
condition of understanding and agreement is practically impossible.
In view of the uses to which "science" has been put in propa–
ganda and in vastly increased destructiveness in war, it seems a
matter of course that prior optimism about science be replaced by pes–
simism. When, as in the question asked, scientific attitude
is
referred
to as one "of mind," it has to be recognized that the
mind
here in
question is not the private intellect of this and that person or even of
the group or class called
intellectual.
It stands for a pervasively ex–
tended and deeply permeating disposition in which collective dises-
