(The CRIMSON invites all men in the University to submit signed communications of timely interest. It assumes no responsibility, however, for sentiments expressed under this head and reserves the right to exclude any whose publication would be palpably inappropriate.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

I should like to make a few comments on Mr. Edsall's letter in this Thursday's Crimson.

Mr. Edsall says: "When reason is applied to Religion, there is naturally discord. It is as if one tried to play a violin with a saw." Now there is considerably more than discord. Such treatment inevitably results in the ruin of the violin: Whereas the saw is quite unharmed.

But what is religion? The Oxford Dictionary defines it as "Human recognition of superhuman controlling power, and especially of a personal God entitled to obedience." Religion is the natural outcome of human experience both rational and mystical; it is a recognition of those principles which are beyond the direct comprehension of man. Religion took the form of recognition of a personal God, because that was the simplest and apparently the most logical explanation man could find. But recently he has found other explanations, equally inadequate, perhaps, but nevertheless explanations which he is able to believe more whole-heartedly. And, as he gradually, almost unconsciously realizes that his religion is not what has been believed in the past, but what he himself believes, he substitutes his new explanations for the old ones, until they too shall have been superceded. But, just as he treasures any other long-loved relics of the past, he curiously and inconsistently hangs on to the old ideas, and, even when his faith in them is gone, calls them his religion.

Mr. Edsall says that "the great moral to be drawn from this controversy is: keep distinct things apart. Do not confuse Science and Religion." Now this is just what isn't the moral of this controversy. In the beginning, science and religion were exactly the same thing--an attempt to understand that eternal, transcendent, inexplicable mystery, existence. As this attempt was carried on, it very naturally split up into two methods: some men considered the majesty of the unseen, and made appropriate conjectures as to what it might be; and some men tried to arrive at the same discovery by the careful study of that which is actually seen and knowable. There came a time when men were filled with a peculiar passion for applying names to things; and accordingly the first method was called religion and the second science, and man forgot that they were one and the same thing from the very beginning. The great moral to be drawn from the present controversy is not to "keep distinct things apart," but to stop trying to make two things out of the same thing. It makes no difference whether you believe in both,--and, as Mr. Edsall very nicely proves in his remarks on miracles and other apparent exceptions to scientific principles, the two ideas are not wholly irreconcilable--if you believe in both, then they are your religion.

I fear that I shall have to modify my rather too vigorous remarks on Mr. Edsall's excellent simile of the violin and the saw. If you play your violin with a saw, your violin will not be completely spoiled. Its strings may be broken; but they are easily replaced, and your violin may even be improved by the process. But it will never be exactly the same as it was before. EDWARD SCHOUTEN ROBINSON '26.