-•¦¦¦"  ^*  «  Hi.tinjipim  awa
Healy Memorial Library
,4, ^ . »

we jggraw.W.

EELIGION AND SCIENCE
A PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY

'PyTbv yap oiiSapais itrrlv &s &\\a iia.B4ifj.aTa., &W' 4k iroWris
avvovaias yiyvofxevifs irepl Tit wpay/jLa avrb Kal rov trvffiv
i£a(<pi>ris oTov wirb irvpbs irifSiftravTos e{,a<fi<)ev <p&s iv rp i//uxp
yev6fj.ev.ov avrb eavro tidy Tpetfjet. — Plato, Epist. vii.

These matters cannot be communicated in words as other
sciences are. Out of repeated debates on them, and much
social intercourse, there is kindled suddenly a light in the
mind, as from fire bursting forth, which, when once gener
ated, keeps itself alive. — Gbote's Translation.

Then sight, or that which to the soul is sight,
As by a lightning-flash, will come to thee.
— The Dream of Gerontius.

EELIGION AND SCIENCE
A PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY

BY

JOHN THEODOEE MEKZ
AUTHOR OF 'A HISTORY OF EUROPEAN THOUQHT IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY'

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBUKGH AND LONDON
MCMXV

All Rights reserved

10

¦ft 55-

UetricatelJ ta
MY BELOVED WIFE
WITH THE HUMBLE PRAYER
THAT THE AIM OF THIS ESSAY MAY BE WORTHY/ OF
HER INSPIRING LOVE AND HELP

Thrise happie she, that is so well assured
Vnto her selfe and setled so in hart :
that nether will for better be allured,
ne feard with worse to any chaunce to start,
But like a steddy ship doth strongly part
the raging waues, and keepes her course aright :
Most happy she that most assured doth rest,
but he most happy who such one loues best.
— Spenser.

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.

PAGE-
PART I.— GENERAL ... . i-8»
1 Meaning of Science and Religion . . .2
The class of readers appealed to . . .4
Outer and Inner World ... .5
' Modern predominance of the Outer
Biology adds its influence to Cosmology
Social organisation reduces men to instruments . 8
Effect of Struggle for Existence as standard . 10
Reflections against extreme confidence in Science . 11
Limitation of known " laws of nature " . . .13
Inner life unlocalisable . . . . .14
Inner and outer as together, not opposed . . 17
Descartes' " Cogito " .... 18
British philosophy ..... 191
The stream of thought ..... 20
Fixed objects in the stream . . . .21
Firmament of the Soul ... 21
Periodicity of movement . . 22
Memory ....... 23
Imagination . ... 24
The Real World .... 27
Adult and infantile consciousness . . 28
Subjective experience prior . . . .28
Genetic psychology ... .30
Difficulty of keeping to introspective aspect . . 32
Notion of reality ...... 34
How arrived at . . . . .36
Communion with personality . . . .36
Source of notion both of person and thing : Dilthey . 37
Wallace ....... 37
Tarde ....... 38

VIII

CONTENTS.

Perceptual and emotional consciousness
Distinction between subject and object
Two meanings of Self
"Solipsism"
In a sense true
No self at first opposed to other
Criticism of Descartes' ' ' Cogito "
Primordial view synoptic
Lost in analysis and not restored in synthesis
Illustrations
Revelation of other personality
Dawn of reality
The " objective world,'' a selection
Attempt to restore continuity
Continuum broken for intellectual progress
Hence arises antithesis between scientific and
aspect .....
Inner world as continuing the whole
Why we reverse the natural order .
Stages of child's mind
Sinking of subjectivity into the background
Demands of practice
Breaking up of continuum
Language .
Artificial view of things
Spatial symbolism .
Substance and cause .
Attempt to express unity
Recognition of self
Resistance and effort
Self and body
Primordial self
M atter and mind .
Appearance and reality
Effort to realise source of reality

.•eligious

4041
4243
45454647 48
4850
51 53
54 55
58585959 61
62
63
65 66 67
68686970
70 717274 78

PART II.— SCIENCE .
Data of thought .
Peculiar case of music
Definite realities become Cosmos

81-120 82

CONTENTS.

IX

Their source a chaos
Science deals with the definite
Primary and secondary qualities .
Abstract world of science verifiable
Its extension supposed an endless process
But subjective whole not grasped .
Discontinuity ....
Principle of continuity
Two meanings of continuity
Absence of gaps and absence of breaks
With breaks, science cannot deal .
They are in the primordial stream of thought
Spatial discontinuities
Life and consciousness
Uniformity of nature
Inapplicable to the primordial reality
Actual complexes not wholly analysable .
This true even of lifeless things .
Why scientific ideas are so impressive
Two distinct worlds, each containing and contained
Which is the larger depends on the point of view
Transition from either to the other
No separate idea of matter
Nor yet of mind as substance
Bond of union in personality
Explanation and description
Two different processes
Identical if complete
But completeness unattainable
Abstract thought and artistic creation
Framework of the world taken for interpretation of reality
To interpret is more than to explain
Interpretation brings in meaning and value

8585868787

9191 93 95
97 97
99
102102103
105 107108
108 109
110110
110
112 113 113114
116 117 120

PART III.— RELIGION
Recapitulation .
Subjective interpretation of the Universe
Rejected by strict science .
Ideal or Spiritual aspect of things
Want of special language to express it

121-192 121125
125126 127

CONTENTS.

Except, for some, that of music . . . .127
But this not translatable into ordinary speech . .128
Indefinable background of thought governed by abstractions 128
Outer and Inner . . . . . .128
Pains and pleasures intermediate .... 130
Connected with the body ..... 130
Normal and abnormal ..... 131
Distinction for science does not exist . . . 131
Feeling of the All . . . . . .133
Not derivable from the apparent external All . . 134
Naturalistic view reverses the order of things . . 135
" Together " even of external things evades synthesis . 136
Synthetic products and natural complexes . . 137
Meaning of natural things . . . .138
Art goes deeper than Science .... 139
Yet does not suffice to restore the lost unity . . 141
Interpretation ought not to be detached from daily life . 142
Must have a social reference . . . .143
All-embracing reality indicated by the inner world . 145
"Spirit" ....... 146
Religious view of the world . . . .146
Counterpart of scientific ..... 146
Result of a long history ..... 147
Apparent contrast as regards general consent . .147
¦Contrast as regards problems .... 149
Why science carries conviction .... 151
Clearness and exactitude ..... 151
¦Certainty of method attained through limitation . . 154
The spiritual view aims at totality . . . 154
Though vague, it may be certain in content . .154
Language and thought ..... 157
Difficulty of expressing the inner world by words . 158
¦Synoptic view of the whole . . . .161
Essential even in the exactest knowledge . . 161
But pre-eminently to grasp moral and religious life . 162
Leading notions of spiritual thought . . .165
Personality of God ..... 166
The idea derived from introspection . . .166
But from the stage before limits are imposed . .171
•Our own self presented fragmentarily . . . 172
.Longing for the larger view .... 174

CONTENTS. xi
The larger the mind the greater the personality . . 174
Inference from limited personalities to complete personality 175
Feeling of absolute dependence . . . .175
Duplex view of self . . . . .177
Essence of the Divine Being conceived also as dual . 178
At once individual and all-comprehensive . . 179
Transcendence and Immanence of God . . . 179
Common-sense view of the world .... 181
How arrived at . . . . . 181
Science depersonalises . . . .186
The personal element to it miraculous ... . 186
But we only grasp any totality by returning to this . 187
Meaning of the miraculous .... 187
Revelation. . . . . . .188
Its wider meaning . . . . . 188
Revelation of self and selves in childhood . . 189
Revelation Tunning through history . . . 191

RELIGION AND SCIENCE.

PAET I.
GENERAL.

The object of this Essay differs from that of
many other dissertations with a similar title.
It does not profess to discuss either scientifie
theories or religious doctrine. It takes for
granted as simple fact that a certain amount
of generally accepted scientific knowledge
exists, and it takes equally for granted that
religious beliefs exist. The latter may at
any time differ amongst themselves very
widely, whereas scientific knowledge, at any
moment of time, can to a large extent be
stated in generally accepted terms, 'though

2 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
in the course of time these terms change
very considerably.
Nor is it my intention to define carefully
either of the two words — Science and
Meaning Religion. It is supposed that thoughtful
of Science ...
and readers have an adequate notion that science
signifies knowledge gained by methodical
observation and reasoning, accredited by
persons generally believed to be competent.
And so far as religion is concerned, a simple
definition may suffice. It will be taken to
signify such convictions as refer to our Duty
in relation to our Destiny as human beings,
without entering upon sectarian or individual
differences. It is not likely that many of the readers
Into whose hands this Essay may fall will
find any difficulty in accepting these simple
data. Certainly Science plays such a
prominent part in our present life that it
requires no further introduction, nor do I
think that the existence of Religion in the
general sense just indicated will meet with

GENERAL. 3
any denial. Should there, however, be any
among those who glance at this Essay who
consider religion a term for an antiquated
thing, and believe that science not only
embraces all accessible knowledge but should
also supply all necessary convictions, then
I wish it to be understood that the following
pages are not written for them. I do not
think that any philosophical arguments would
be likely to change such opinion, wherever
it exists. Should such a change be possible,
I think it would rather come from the in
fluence of a very different class of persons,
for whom, however, the reflections contained
in this Essay are likewise not primarily
intended. This latter class comprises those who are
Dot troubled by any doubts arising from
the conflict between science and religion or
between knowledge and faith. These are
fortunately to be found scattered through
the land, belonging to all professions without
distinction of rank, age, or sex. They are

4 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
the very lights of the world, who irradiate
an atmosphere of warmth, and command that
love and reverence which form the very life-
blood of society. For those who are " so
well possessed " my words will be superfluous.
The class There is, however, a very large and, I
of readers
appealed believe, an increasing class of thoughtful
to. persons, especially among the younger gener
ation, whose views on the subject before us
are not formed, who feel themselves sore
perplexed by the contradictions which appar
ently exist between the dicta of science and
the tenets of religious creeds," who are not
prepared to sacrifice the truth of either, but
who find it extremely difficult to reconcile
them. To thoughtful readers amongst this
class I venture to submit the following
reflections.

II.
The difficulty with which we have to deal
presents many aspects, and can be approached

GENERAL. 5
from different sides. I will select one of outer and
. ill n Inner
these. It is expressed by the contrast ofworia.
the Outer and the Inner World. The vast
increase of scientific knowledge of the Outer
World — i.e., of things surrounding us in time
and space — makes it increasingly difficult to
find a location for what we term the Inner
World. The latter, so it is alleged, is con
fined to an abode in a portion of the universe
which is infinitesimally small compared with
the totality of existing worlds. It is rele
gated to the interior of living and sentient
beings, and among these to a comparatively
very small number.
And even among the small number of
human beings, it is, again, only a small
proportion in and by whom what we may
term the inner or higher life — the World
of Thought — is represented. This is, in fact,
one school of thinkers suggests, a mere epi-
phenomenon which can have no influence
upon the Outer World.
On the other side, the influence of the

6 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
Outer World upon this infinitesimal pheno
menon is overwhelming, and suggests that
the laws which govern it make any in
dependent existence impossible or merely
apparent. This view leads to what is usually
termed Fatalism.
Modem The beginning of this tendency of thought
nance of m modern times and among the most highly
e* civilised peoples of Western Europe is to be
traced to the great change which followed
the acceptance of the Copernican System
of Cosmology. This destroyed the older
geocentric view according to which man
and human affairs formed the centre of
interest. What James Martineau very finely
said about the Grecian mind is applicable
to a great extent to all European culture
up to the age which witnessed the birth of
Modern Science : —
Fair as was the climate of that land, man was
yet the spectacle most admirable there, and for the
same reason that Eve, when gazing into the lake
of Eden, beheld nothing but her own loveliness,

GENERAL. 7
though the whole of Paradise was reflected from its
bosom, did the Grecian Soul, when bending over
the depths of philosophy, feel itself attracted by
the incomparable beauty of its own self.
The Copernican or Cosmo-centric view did
not penetrate into general thought in all its
consequences till it had been confirmed by
the subsequent discoveries of thinkers like
Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. But already
at the end of the eighteenth century it had
gained the ascendancy in French thought, so
much so that what was termed the New
tonian philosophy was considered by fore
most thinkers and practical reformers to be
the very master-key in science which was
to open the understanding of social order.
Neither the extreme theories of Laplace, nor
the Utopias of Saint-Simon and Fourier, are
now accepted as valid or practical; but the
general movement of scientific thought which
depreciates the part played by individual
human life and activity in the world was
strengthened by a more recent theory which

/
8 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
dealt exclusively with the living creation.
Biology This is the theory of Natural Selection, and
adds its
influence notably of Inheritance, which, as generally
to Cosmo
logy, interpreted, seems to leave little room for
individual originality and spontaneity.
In quite recent times a third influence has
been added to that of Science, an influence
which is only indirectly connected with the
Scientific view, but nevertheless works in the
same direction — i.e., in the direction of min
imising the importance of human effort in
the world at large, or reducing it only to
that of a small number of persons gifted,
not through their own merit, with excep-
Sociai tional ability and power. The rest, and by
organisa-
tion far the largest portion of human beings,
reduces .... .
men to especially in the most civilised countries, are
iiistru- , .
meats. more ana more reduced to mere instruments
whose labour is regulated or utilised by large
organisations, such as trading companies,
trades - unions, or the Government itself.
Even the spread of popular education, which
was expected to do so much for the enlight-

GENERAL. 9
enment of the masses, has in many instances
tended to discourage individual effort and to
remove personal responsibility in the choice and
prosecution of the vocation and duties of life.
These three influences, of the modern spirit,
of scientific methods, and of social organisation
have, together with many others, tended in
the direction of making the aspect of the
World more mechanical, that of Society more
artificial, and of minimising the value, at
least amongst the larger proportion of human
beings, of individual effort and originality.
For where your activities, whether physical
or mental, are believed to be under the con
trol of inexorable laws of Nature, and your
conduct, while supposed to be free, is really
dictated by the order of Society, there is
little room for individual choice and spon
taneous resolution. And it is only where
the latter exist that the individual person
is thrown back upon his own inner resources,
forced to interrogate his own conscience, and,
as it were, take his future and destiny into

10 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
his own hands ; in one word, to form and
appeal to some highest conviction.
That this is so has been recognised also by
thinkers who are primarily impressed by the
progress of Science and by modern mechanical,
cosmological, and biological theories, but who
do not share by any means the interest in
the older religious beliefs which this Essay
is intended to uphold.
An extreme and much-discussed represent
ative of this class is Friedrich Nietzsche.
What marks, however, his efforts, and the
efforts of others who think like him, is the
attempt to find a stimulus and outlet for
individual energy within the limits of scien
tific doctrine itself, — and this consists in
placing the intellectual achievement of a
small number at the service of the struggle
Effect of for existence. By such means it seems to
Struggle
for Exist- others that human beings would be reduced
ence as
standard. — to use a phrase of Huxley s — to the rank
of " Bipedal Cattle, only more ferocious and
brutal by dint of their greater intelligence."

GENERAL. 11

III.

It is, however, not in the way indicated
at the close of the last section that it is
likely that the mechanism and collectivism
of modern life will be superseded and en
livened by a renewed vigour of individual
and personal effort.
The reaction, as it seems to me, must
come by a much more radical change of
thought, and it is the object of this Essay to
show how this change is also indicated by
certain tendencies in recent philosophy. But
before explaining this definitely, it may be
of interest to show how the development of
modern science itself, if viewed as a whole, Reflec-
tions
tends to discourage the extreme confidence against
. . „ , . . extreme
which some of its representatives feel in its confidence
assumptions. I will confine myself to two
reflections which point in this direction.
The first refers to the often -used phrase
of the " inexorable laws of Nature." What

12 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
must strike anyone who has followed the
most recent progress of scientific thought is
the growing uncertainty which has crept into
the fundamental principles not only of the
biological but also of the mechanical sciences.
This contrasts very markedly with the con
fidence which existed half a century ago.
Several highest principles at that time looked
upon as laws of nature and accepted as such
by scientific authorities have since lost their
supposed validity, having been subjected to
incisive and destructive criticism. With the
exception of the Newtonian law of gravita
tion, none of these so-called first principles
has withstood the loosening effect of deepen
ing research revealing quite unexpected phe
nomena. Nothing has tended more to upset
older views than the discovery of formerly
unknown radiations culminating in the dis
covery of Radium. All the older theories
of the generation and maintenance of Solar
heat, and also those referring to the Age
of the Earth, have been completely upset.

GENERAL. 13
The Atomic theory, in its older form, to
gether with the law of fixed proportions
and the stability of the elements, has been
challenged, and even the Newtonian laws of
Motion are subjected to criticism, whilst the
law of gravitation itself is confined to merely
molar phenomena, having been found inade
quate in dealing with molecular or still
smaller phenomena ; and it is with the in
vestigation of these that modern physics is
mainly occupied.
In consequence of these changes, the
doctrine of the so-called " inexorable laws of
Nature " requires at least the qualification
that if such laws exist they are, so far as
the totality of things is concerned, entirely
unknown to us, and likely to remain so ; the Limita-
known laws referring merely to restricted known
1 "laws of
regions of phenomena and events. nature."
For anyone who has studied carefully the
progress of the Abstract Sciences during the
last hundred years, little imagination is re
quired to picture to oneself the entirely

14 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
altered features which Chemical and Physical
Science is sure to present at the end of
another century. All this tends to invalidate
other than purely scientific deductions founded
upon the actual state of physical theory : and
indeed those scientific thinkers who have
stepped outside their special departments and
ventured to construct ethical, social, and even
religious creeds, such as notably Buchner and
Haeckel, have resorted to the vaguest meta
physical notions, which in the sense in
tended by them could not stand before
strict scientific criticism.
There is, however, a second reflection,
which may appear paradoxical to my readers,
but which I will endeavour to show does
not lack the support of advanced Scientific
Knowledge and its practical application.
inner life The popular idea of locating the inner life,
unlocalis-abie. by whatever term we may choose to describe
it — such as mind, soul, consciousness, &c. —
somewhere inside the body as its physical
envelope, is in the light of modern research

GENERAL. 15
quite gratuitous, although we are so accus
tomed to it that to doubt its relevancy
appears a fanciful paradox. To show that
this is not so, I will give an illustration.
It is nowadays possible for any person with
very moderate practice and intelligence to con
verse with a stranger who has no knowledge
of the telephone or of wireless telegraphy,
giving instructions or information which is
not his own at all, but which the person
he is speaking to would, for lack of the
knowledge just referred to, attribute without
hesitation to the mind of the speaker. As
the listener would without doubt form an
opinion of the intelligence or thought of the
speaker according to his utterances, not know
ing that he acts merely as a means of trans
mission for the thoughts and deliverances of
another mind situated at a great distance,
he would carry away with him an entirely
erroneous conception of the actual state of
things. Now it requires little reflection to see

16 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
that we have no right to consider the
physical organ of any living creature or of
man himself in any other light than as an
instrument of transmission of an intelligenc.e
which, so far as we know, may not be
found in that space where we erroneously
locate it. I do not mean to say that the
source of all intelligence is situated somewhere
else in space, but it is not unreasonable to
infer that, if a spiritual world exists at all,
this is not ,to be found by ever so minute
an observation or dissecting analysis of a
physical organism.
In fact, we may adopt the view expressed
somewhere by Lotze, who himself believed in
a certain sense in the physical location of
the soul, that whatever this may mean, we
must, to find the soul, dive as it were into
an entirely different dimension, penetrate into
an entirely different order of existence.

GENERAL. 17

IV.

Our reflections so far have attached them
selves to the ordinary popular view of the y
outer and the inner world — meaning by the
former the things and events (including our
own physical existence) which lie around us,
and which as we suppose are observable
likewise by other persons, and meaning by
the latter that portion of our personal
existence which contains our thought, taking
this term in the widest sense as including
sensations, feelings, desires, conceptions, ideas,
and the like, all these being our private
property and inaccessible to the gaze and
knowledge of other persons. It is, however,
possible to take an entirely different view
of the relation of the outer and inner
worlds. It is possible, instead of contrast- inner and
. . outer as
ing them and placing one opposite to the together,
... . . . . not
other, like the image in a mirror to its opposed.
original — to look upon both inner and outer
B

18 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
experiences as lying, as it were, on the same
plane, making up together the total field of
our consciousness.
It may be said that psychology proper,
the science of Mind, has only begun histori
cally, and can only be consistently developed,
with the recognition of this exclusively intro
spective point of view.
Historically it may be considered as having
been pushed into the foreground and placed
at the entry not only of psychology but of
Descartes' all philosophy by Descartes in his celebrated
"Cogito." dictum "cogito ergo sum." But though this
purely introspective aspect is introduced in
Descartes' dictum, it is — as has been fre
quently pointed out — mixed up with a con
ception which introduces a feature not purely
introspective. This fact, — to which we shall
have to return later on, — as well as the
difficulty of confining oneself strictly to
purely introspective data, has retarded the
development of philosophical thought, which
has always fallen back again into the dualism

GENERAL. 19
of the outer and the inner, abandoning the
straight road indicated by Descartes. It is
the nierit of British philosophy that it has, British
more than any other modern philosophy, sophy.
again and again reverted to the true path,
and worked out some of the results and
consequences to which this must necessarily
lead. And it is the object of this Essay to
apply this view to a special problem — the
problem of Religion, and to state the con
clusions to which it leads us.
In order to make this purely introspective
view clear to my readers, I will make use of
two similes, the first of which was suggested
and beautifully elaborated by the late William
James in the ninth and tenth chapters of
his greatest work, ' The Principles of Psy
chology.' He introduces there the picture of
the "Stream of Thought."
Let each one of my readers consider what
goes on in his own mind at any given
instant of time. Let him for the moment
disregard the fact that there are other

20 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
persons besides himself to whom experience
' similar to his own may belong. Giving his
attention solely to his own experience, he
will notice that this consists in a continuous
flow of thought which language describes in
various terms, such as sensations, percep
tions, ideas, feelings, desires, volitions, &c.
All these are in various ways mixed up
and in continuous never-ceasing motion and
change — comparable to the waves and eddies
and changing lights in a flowing stream.
There is absolutely nothing else in his mind,
and the latter — the mind itself — is at the
moment for him nothing less arid nothing
more than the totality of the many features
The of this flowing river or stream of thought.
stream of
thought. • And should the reader be tempted to look
as it were outside of this moving scenery,
to think, as he would say, of other things
and persons, he would find that he could
only do so by introducing their images into
the stream of thought, where they will form
a special feature embedded in and among

GENERAL. 21
other features of this moving spectacle. In
fact they would be found to displace some
thing else, and to acquire, as it were, a location
within the boundaries of the running stream.
This simile, though extremely suggestive
and helpful, seems, however, to lack one
peculiarity which is essential if we wish to
apply it to our waking life and to include
more than what we are conscious of when, as
it were, we retire wholly into ourselves. In
our waking and observant states of mind,
the flow of thought seems to eddy round
and encircle definite fixed objects — the
objects of the outer world.
For although it may be true that the
latter are likewise in a continual state of
change, they are for our own individual
experience to some extent fixtures which
attract our special attention, or stand out Fixed
objects
more or less clearly in the midst of the in the
stream.
flowing stream of thought.
I therefore prefer another simile, and I Firma ment of
will speak of the Firmament of the Soul, the Soul.

22 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
comparing the content of our Consciousness
at any moment with the impression of the
starry heavens at night, which, though mov
ing continuously like a stream, contain
nevertheless certain apparently fixed points
which contrast very markedly with clouds
or other moving portions of the sky.
There is, further, a very important feature
in the movement of our thoughts which is
not represented in the analogy of a flowing
Period- stream. This is the recurrence and periodicity
icity of . .
move- of certain features in the general movement.
This feature is well represented in the period
ical recurrence of some things within our
physical horizon, such as the constellations
of the fixed stars, the rising and setting of
the sun and moon ; and the very irregularity
of the periods and details in these recurrent
phenomena is quite analogous to the nature
of our recurrent thoughts and observations.,
In both cases the repetition is just sufficient
to arrest our attention and impress us with
the contrast between that which is more or

ment.

GENERAL. 23
less abiding and those surrounding features
which are ever changing and never repeat
themselves. The abiding features form that enlarge
ment, both in the case of our mental and
in that of our physical horizon or firma
ment, which is due to memory. Memory Memory.
stores up, as it were, certain observations,
which, if they only happened once, would
in all likelihood soon be forgotten. Were
the rapid succession of our thoughts without
repetition and periodicity, it would resemble
the spectacle of the moving landscape which
we may watch from a railway train, and of
which we retain only a vague and general
impression, which makes retention by the
mind, or description, wellnigh impossible.
As it is, very few of the new impressions
and experiences which we gain in later life
are even approximately free from the pen
umbra or the fringes of earlier experience,
stored up through memory, and forming the
background or setting of everything we are

24 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
tempted to call new. As we progress in
years the flow of our thoughts or the firma
ment of our soul is increasingly filled with
memory pictures.
This is likewise more adequately repre
sented by the second simile which I have
made use of, inasmuch as the physical fir
mament becomes more and more crowded
through the scientific aids of sight and
reasoning, rendering the spectacle more in
teresting and intricate, but new discoveries
less prominent and impressive.
imagina- In addition to memory, but only in con
junction with it, imagination plays a great
part in the filling up of our field of conscious
ness. But it is unnecessary for our present
purposes to enlarge on this subject, as I
shall have to refer to it in the sequel.

tion,

GENERAL. 25

V.

What I have so far wished to impress on
my readers is the fact that all our know
ledge of what we term outer as well as inner
things and events is for each of us individ
ually comprised in the moving stream of
thought or the firmament of the soul, and
is to be found nowhere else. And I wish
to impress this so much the more, as I shall
be met by an objection now to be dealt
with. Thoughtful readers will probably
admit that all our knowledge is within the
confines of our individual experience, that
it is primarily all personal ; but they will
add that nevertheless there is a marked
difference, which common-sense describes by
the term outer or inner, external or internal,
physical or mental.
A portion of the experiences of our con
scious life are not only subjective but also
objective, by which latter term we mean that

26 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
they have an existence outside and independ
ent of our respective individual selves. They
could not indeed exist for us individually
except they were a portion1 of our subjective
experience, but they are in addition to this
something more, as we know by what has
been termed " inter - subjective communica
tion" with other persons, who describe to
us experiences so similar to our own that
we are for practical purposes induced to
call them the same. By far the greater
portion of all our conduct in the course of
our life is based upon this conviction.
In fact, we extend this conviction, gained
primarily through communion with other
persons, so as to assign to things and events
contained in this common experience an
existence quite independent of any mental
experience at all, be it our own or that of
other persons.
In fact, we objectify a portion of the total
contents of our individual consciousness,
calling it the external or, par excellence,

GENERAL. 27
the Real World, and contrast it with that The Real
World.
other portion which we term the Inner
World, and which, though possessed of
reality, seems to have less of it than the
former portion.
This conviction is very much strength
ened by the ordinary occupations of our
life, which consist to a large extent, and
with many of us almost exclusively, in deal
ings with or acting among other persons ;
and even when we retire into the sanctuary
of our own individual thoughts, we find
these again almost exclusively occupied with
memory pictures of what we term our
external life. And though it is the special
task of psychologists — be they scientific,
philosophical, or purely literary — to take
special cognizance of the subjective side of
our experience, it has always proved ex
tremely difficult to carry through this intro
spective view consistently, and not to lapse
again and again into a contemplation of
the external world.

28 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
The reasons of this are manifold and some
of them quite obvious, but there is one cir
cumstance which stands out prominently.
Psychologists, to whichever of the above-
mentioned classes they belong, whether
students of psycho - physics, introspective
thinkers, or psychological novelists, deal
almost exclusively with the adult mind.
This induces them to attach much import
ance to mental features and abilities which
have been acquired in the course of adoles-
Aduit and cence, but many of which are much less
infantile
conscious- marked or perhaps totally absent if- we go
ness. back to the period of childhood or infancy.

VI.

If anything be wanting to convince the
reader that all his knowledge of external
Subjective things is merely a development and elabora-
experience
prior. tion of what were and still are purely sub
jective experiences, he need only go back in

GENERAL. 29
imagination to that period of his life in which
he must have been utterly unconscious of
anything besides feelings and desires which
had not yet developed into sensations or
perceptions or definite volitions.
An infant in its early days beholding a
red colour can have no conception of a thing
to which it belongs. It is merely a passing
feature in the small horizon of its contracted
conscious life.
Such may be succeeded by other experi
ences of sight, sound, or touch, or by feel
ings of discomfort or pain, which are auto
matically succeeded by movement without
any definite exertions of an active will.
The great problem of psychology should
be to describe by what new experiences
the contracted field of a child's conscious
ness becomes enlarged, how definite sensa
tions take the place of vague impressions,
and an active will ministers to more pro
nounced desires. Such psychology would,
as it were, describe and define the objects

30 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
and changes in the stream of thought or the
firmament of the soul. It should be analo
gous to the gradual development of descrip
tive astronomy, which began by singling
out definite objects in the physical firma
ment, and advanced to more and more de
tailed knowledge of cosmic and terrestrial
phenomena.
Genetic Such psychology would be truly genetic,
psycho
logy, but not in the sense of describing the gene
alogy of the external man by going back to
fanciful reconstructions of prehistoric pheno
mena, or even of those of the animal creation,
but simply by answering the question : What
are presumably the earliest experiences of
a conscious infant mind, and in what order
does it gradually gain that wider horizon
and more complicated aggregate and flow
of sensations, perceptions, ideas, imagina
tions, desires, and purposeful volitions which
constitute at any moment the state of the
adult mind ?
It is only in quite recent times that

GENERAL 31
attempts have been made to fulfil this task,
and to deal with the gradual growth and
development of individual consciousness, in
stead of starting at once with the adult
mind and its functions, as known to us
from the intellectual side mainly through
language, and on the active side through
the observable conduct of our fellow-men.
That this is, however, the true object of
introspective psychology, is being more and
more recognised by philosophical writers ; as
is evident from the many passages in phil
osophical works — and those not exclusively
psychological — in which single traits in the
history of the individual mind are described,
frequently in much detail and with great
clearness. In fact this, and not the labours
of psycho -physical research, constitutes the
principal advance, not only in recent psycho
logy but eminently also in the general meta
physical and philosophical literature of recent
times. But, as I stated above, there is always the

32 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
Difficulty danger lurking in the background of aban-
of keeping
tointro- doning the purely introspective aspect and
spective . .
aspect. introducing arguments and observations
drawn from the external world ; the most
seductive of these being supplied by words
and language. Now the latter are entirely
a creation of the adult mind, to which the
experiences of the child's mind must gradu
ally accommodate themselves : they are there
fore not immediately expressive of the pre-
intellectual, almost entirely emotional state
of feelings and desires which constituted the
earlier stages of mental development.
The fact also that for the adult mind —
and increasingly so as civilisation progresses
— the outer world becomes more important
and through the progress of scientific know
ledge to some persons almost overwhelming,
makes us forget that in the earliest stages
of our life no outer world exists at all ; that
the knowledge of it has to be acquired very
gradually ; that it has slowly to emerge out of
the cloudland of infantile feelings and desires.

GENERAL. 33
We find in modern philosophical literature
frequent reference to the genesis of our belief
in an external world, but many of the argu
ments brought forward are based upon logical
deductions more fitted to justify the exist
ence of such a belief than to explain how
the belief arose in each individual instance.
The attitude of the psychological writer
seems to resemble that of the geologist who
attempts to explain the history of the earth
by resorting to forces and agencies which he
sees at work in the present day. Such ex
planations, though useful and interesting,
acquire much greater convincing force by
the addition of a theory which could never
have been propounded by geological investi
gation alone, but which was supplied by
astronomy — the theory that the present
state of the earth, as we know it, is a stage
in the consolidation and cooling of a gaseous
body thrown off from a central mass by cen
trifugal combined with attractive forces.

34 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.

VII.
It cannot be my present object to mark
even in the broadest outline the principal
traits which a genetic psychology would re
veal ; for the purposes of this Essay, I
will refer only to one or two points which
appear of special importance. Among all
the general or abstract notions with which
the developing mind has to become fam-
Notionof iliar, none is more fundamental than that
Reality. of Reality. As stated above, all mental
experiences have one reality in common.
They are simply there, they happen. This
is the reality to which Descartes referred
all knowledge and all certainty, as the ulti
mate test. But in practical life we have a
further additional test of reality : we dis
tinguish between experiences which we stig
matise as merely apparent, and others to
which we attribute actual existence ; and
we term the latter objective or external in

GENERAL. 35
contrast with the former which are purely
subjective. The question arises as to the criteria of
this additional reality, this more pregnant
form of existence. This problem of the
criteria of external existence may be an
swered by an appeal to the verdict of adult
and educated persons.
I may, e.g., invite each of my readers to
try and answer this question for himself.
In works on psychology we find definite
answers to it. We are told that an experi
ence originally subjective acquires that ad
ditional impress of actual reality by being,
e.g., permanent or recurring, by being ex
perienced by other persons, by fitting into
that general order of things which we term
the outer world — i.e., by standing in relation
to other experiences, by having a definite
location or generally what we term in micro
scopic work definition, which implies clear
outline and vividness.
Now all these and a variety of other

36 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
properties which qualify a subjective experi
ence to be in addition objective or real, in
the more pregnant sense of the word, may
describe with tolerable completeness the
means by which the adult mind answers
the question as to reality, but they do not
answer the question how the infant mind
How may possibly arrive at the notion of reality
arrived at. .
— or, to express it more crudely, how it
arrives at the notion of things.
It seems to me that the principal experi
ence of the infant mind which will lead
from a vague to a more definite notion of
something externally real has been omitted
in the list of criteria given above. This is
Personality.
Com- Inter-subjective communion, as Ward terms
munionwith per- it, reveals to the infant mind the outer world.
sonality. This has been, indeed, remarked by various
writers who have dealt with the problem,
and it is so important and to my present
purpose that I will quote in full three pass
ages taken from three thinkers, of whom,
I believe, none had when he wrote any

GENERAL. 37
knowledge of either of the two others. The Source of
notion
earliest of these passages occurs in an article both of
person
by Wilhelm Dilthey of the year 1890: — andthing: Dilthey.
Der erste objective Zusammenhang eines Ganzen,
der uns aufgeht, ist der einer anderen Person. Die
Mutter, welche sieh iiber die Wiege des Kindes
beugt, es aufnimmt und nahrt, ist ihm die erste
voile Realitat, welche aus dem Hintergrunde des
Sinnenchaos auftaucht und leibkraftig wird. . . .
Nach dieser Analogie concipiren wir dann die
Objekte. . . . Das Ding und dessen begriffliche
Eorinel : die Substanz ist sonach nicht eine Schopfung
des Verstandes, sondern der Totalitat unserer Seelen-
kratte. Der nachste Beweis hiervon liegt in der
Unmbglichkeit, diese Formel dem Verstand wider-
spruchsfrei durchsichtig zu. machen.
The second passage is from the ' Gifford Wallace.
Lectures,' by William Wallace (1894):—
The mother, already enriched with reason and love,
bending over her infant, does not by her glance, her
smile, her touch, give it a soul, a spirit, a reason;
and yet i& that glance, that smile, that touch, soul,
spirit, reason are as surely born as the physiological
life of the same child is born, and so far as we know
is only born, in the congress of male and female. As
in that case the elements of the living being, the

38 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
constituents which build up structure, are older, far
older than the two parents, who to popular appre
hension are the authors of the being of their progeny ;
so in the spiritual world, the child and its mother
severally bring to their union of soul a store of
powers and faculties prepared by, it may be, cen
turies of inherited tradition. Yet it is in the main
true, that it is the mother's and father's look and
touch . . . which kindles into flame the dull
materials of humanity, and begins that second birth,
that spiritual parentship which, at least not less
than the first, should be the peculiar glory of
human father and motherhood.
Tarde. The last passage is taken from Gabriel
Tarde, ' Les Lois Sociales' (1897): —
Je dis qu'a l'origine, ce rapport d'imitation a
exists non pas entre un individu et une masse con
fuse d'hommes comme assez souvent plus tard, mais
entre deux individus seulement dont fun, enfant,
natt a la vie sociale, et dont l'autre, adulte, deja
socialise" depuis longtemps, lui sert de modele in-
dividuel. . . . Avant de parler, de penser, d'ayir
comme on parle, comme on pense, comme on agit
dans notre monde, nous avons commence" par parler,
penser, agir, comme il ou elle parle, pense, agit. Et
ce il ou cette die, c'est tel ou tel de nos familiers.

GENERAL. 39

VIII.

The foregoing extracts, written from very
different points of view and with more or
less definiteness and eloquence, seem to lead
up to and confirm the view which I desire
to impress upon my readers — namely, that
the first introduction to the real or objec
tive world is through the influence of a
personality or personalities.
These appear on the firmament of the
child's purely subjective consciousness as
luminaries which introduce it into a new
world, which from that moment acquires in
the child's mind a separate and independent
existence. The more definite the outline of
these living figures becomes, the more the
purely subjective feature which accompanies
them sinks into the background and a
perceptional and intellectual process arises
which is the beginning of observation and
thought.

consciousness.

40 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
But these earliest lights on the horizon of
the child's mind which arrest its attention
are not purely objective— i.e., completely de
tached : their appearance is accompanied by
an emotional element, by pleasure and pain,
stimulating impulses and producing and guid-
Percep- ing desires. And it takes a long time before
tual and . .
emotional the purely perceptual portion becomes com
pletely separated from the emotional.
We may sum up this statement by saying
that the dawn of the external world on the
horizon of the child's mind is, not only the
appearance but also the emotion and warmth
of personality. This view, that personality
is the introduction to the conscious per
ception of an external world, or, that a
portion of the stream of thought or the
firmament of the soul has been singled out
and detached from the moving and changing
totality of the whole field of consciousness,
implies a variety of definite features in the
early history of individual mental develop
ment.

GENERAL. 41
To some of these we must now direct our
attention. The instant at which the figure of a
person flashes, as it were, on to the back
ground of the mind's consciousness, is the
moment of birth of the distinction between Distinc-
. . . ti°n
object and subject : the former consisting between
in a definite number of fleeting experiences, and object.
having become consolidated to a more or
less permanent or recurring cluster, analogous
to the constellations of stars on the back
ground of the physical firmament. In con
trast to these more definite clusters or
-complexes, which we may term objects, the
remaining background in which they are em
bedded and to which they belong becomes
the subjective side.
Many psychologists consider that the truly
conscious life of the human soul begins only
with the distinction of object and subject.
This view has been very prominently put
forward, e.g., by Renouvier in France and
by James Ward in this country. It also

42 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
constitutes a prominent feature in the meta
physical doctrine of Fichte and Schelling.
The manner in which it presents itself to
us here is that the object or not-self is, in
its definiteness, prior to the self, which ac
quires only gradually that separateness and
permanence in the stream of consciousness
which we attribute to it in the conception of
our own personality. In fact, it is not till
the child becomes aware of its own body that
a consistent picture, as it were, of its own
self flashes upon its consciousness in a simi
lar way to that in which other personalities
had already presented themselves. From
that moment, and all through life, the
Two word Self acquires and retains two definite
meanings of Self. meanings: the first being that small portion
of the external world which is occupied by
our own physical frame ; the second being
that original, all - comprehensive stream of
consciousness or firmament of the soul
which contains all external as well as all
internal experiences.

GENERAL. 43

IX.

It may here be opportune to refer to a
contention which has frequently been put
forward against views similar to that now
before us.
The subject does not enter into the
course of our argument, and is perhaps not
of much interest to the general reader. But
it refers to a point familiar to readers of
philosophical treatises. The word Solipsism "Solip
sism."
has been coined to denote the doctrine that
every self only knows what is contained
within the circumference of its own thoughts,
and that there is no valid reason for any
individual to maintain the existence of any
thing beyond this circumference. From the
beginning of this Essay, the view has been
held that for every individual mind the
stream of thought, or the moving firmament
of the soul, is the only reality. But we
have been careful to avoid the suggestion

44 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
that there is an independent self or mind
which, like an onlooker, experiences this
stream of thought, or beholds this moving
firmament. For us, all that exists in the
primordial consciousness is this stream of
thought or moving firmament, and should
we wish to use the terms soul, mind, or
self, they would express nothing but the
totality of this moving and changing
experience. The term Self as denoting something apart
from this experience is a notion acquired
after a not - self has been detached in the
stream of thought from its surroundings ;
and to speak of a self without a not-self is
impossible, as the not-self creates the self,
which latter only gradually becomes concen
trated in the conception of bodily existence.
The word Solipsism is a compound of two
words, of which the first, solus, means alone,
and the second, ipse, means self. Now, if
the self is taken to mean not our empirical
personality as we know it in the later stages

GENERAL. 45
of the development of consciousness, but
merely the totality of all our thoughts, then
it is quite true that such in the beginning in a sense
of life must be there alone with nothing
else. In this sense every infant is a " self
alone." But the word "self" has then no No self at
proper meaning as opposed to any other posed to
self. The manner in which Fichte expounds his
doctrine, though it can be translated into a
statement similar to our own, is neverthe
less misleading. In the introduction to his
' Wissenschaftslehre ' he maintained that the
" ego " or " I " posits the " non-ego " ; where
as according to our view, the " non-ego " in
the form of a person is, in the child's con
sciousness, the first appearance of external
or experienced reality, and the " ego " or
" I " comes by contrast much later.
If Fichte, instead of using these awk
ward terms, had in the first instance re
ferred to the stream of thought, in which a
definite something arises as the first intel-

46 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
lectual experience, his exposition would not
have led to so much misunderstanding.
Criticism The same error is contained already in
of Des-
cartes\ Descartes' dictum "cogito ergo sum." As
"Cogito." critics like Huxley, William James, and
others have pointed out, the fact that
thought is there does not imply the exist
ence of a separate thinker : the statement
should have run, Cogitat ergo est or Cogi-
tare est.
A second point which arises out of the
view we have adopted is the following : the
awakening of the child's mind to a know
ledge of the external world is, we maintain,
dependent upon and in the form of a per
sonality or personalities. This view goes
straight against another prejudice which
clings to much psychological theory, and is
only being gradually dispelled.
A person presents itself to observation,
even to that of the adult mind, as a total
ity : and as such also it must have been
first recognised by the infant mind. We

GENERAL. 47
are so much accustomed in practical life as
well as in scientific research to look for
what we term simple data and to construct
complexes or totalities out of such simple
data by putting them together ; we are so
much in the habit of proceeding by analysis
and synthesis ; that we are apt to forget
that observation in its beginning is always
face to face with complexes or totalities,
and that the search for simple elements, be
they physical or mental, is a very difficult
process which comes much later, and is pro
bably never complete or final.
Against this refined and tardily acquired
process of analysing and subsequent collect
ing what we have found into an aggregate,
the first acquaintance with anything real is
always that of a totality or a "together."
The first view in fact is synoptic, and Primor
dial view
neither analytic nor synthetic. Such must synoptic.
also be the first living impression of a per
sonality in the infant consciousness. Now
it is a peculiarity of the recognition of all

48 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
totalities as such, and not as mere aggre
gates or mosaics, that they impress the
mind with something which the slow process
of putting together does not afford. The
process by which, out of a mere collection,
assemblage, or aggregate a definite coherent
image emerges is instantaneous, adding
something indefinable to this aggregate* put
ting as it were life and reality into it.
This applies to all higher experiences even
Lost in of the adult mind. The synoptic view gives

and not something which analysis loses and synthesis
restored
insyn- alone cannot be certain to recover or restore.
This is the impress of such reality as we
term natural, and contrasts with what is
merely artificial.
niustra- One or two examples of this from ordinary
tions. ...
experience will assist the reader to realise
what is meant. A few strokes put upon the
canvas by an artist may, to an observer who
beholds the working of the artist's hand, be
nothing but a seemingly disorderly assem
blage of line and colour, till all at once the

GENERAL. 49
slightest addition of a few more touches,
such as the insertion of an eye, gives to the
whole the appearance of a portrait full of life
and meaning.
Two photographs, placed alongside of each
other in a stereoscope, may present nothing
but a blurred surface of lines, light, and
shade, till all at once, through an un
conscious process, the two pictures fall into
one and present a landscape or figure iru
bold relief. In the process of ordinary
schooling or in the deeper studies of later
life, the mind of the child- or the adult may
laboriously and painfully gather up details
of words or numbers or other symbols and
derive small satisfaction, till all at once and
of a sudden the meaning of the whole flashes
upon the intellect and brings light and
interest. The countenance of a friend com
ing suddenly into your presence may em
barrass you for the time being, till you of a
sudden recognise well-known features, call
ing up a whole world of recollections. The
D

50 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
suddenness in the recognition of the meaning
or deeper reality of a collection of sense-im
pressions or thoughts is nowhere more strik
ing than in listening to a musical performance
or to the words and flow of language of an
impressive orator, and a great part of the
artist's or composer's genius is shown in the
suddenness with which he gives to the as
semblage of words, lines, or sounds the life-
giving touch. In fact, we may agree with
a view suggested in the writings of Lotze,
that the work of an artist consists in giving
to the beholder a surprise, and that Beauty
is a joyful surprise.
Something similar to this sensation must
be the experience of the infant soul when
the numberless traits of affection, the cares
and the caresses of the mother or nurse, all
at once start into relief in the countenance
and figure of a personality which stands
Revelation out from the background of the stream of
of other
person- consciousness or the firmament of the soul,
ality. as the first revelation of reality. The un-

GENERAL. 51
expected coming and going of this figure,
its changes as well as its recurring character-
istic features, introduce into the flow of
thought the first notion of existence and
its opposite, of to be or not to be.
The primordial reality upon which we
dwelt at the beginning of this Essay, and
which forms the background of and includes
all experience of the individual mind, is
simply there and does not suggest any not
there, — it has no negative, it is simply an
affirmative. Reality or existence, as opposed to non- Dawn of
reality.
reality or non-existence, dawns upon the
child's mind only with the recognition of a
definite something, and this something is,
in the first instance, a person. Thus the
primordial and earliest notion of reality is
bound up with the conception of personality.
To free it from this original feature, to dis
tinguish lifeless things, to strip the external
realities of their personal attribute, is a
secondary process : it is acquired by the

52 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
child only through the help of personal
influence, and forms one of the earliest tasks
of instruction, as it also persists through life
as a principal task in practical and scientific
work.

X.

From the moment of this awakening in
the child's consciousness, the mind will have
before it two separate orders of experience,
which may roughly be described as subjective
and objective. The former is continuous in
the course of our waking life : it comprises
everything that happens in the stream of
thought, or that appeared within the firma
ment of the soul. The second or objective
order is the aggregate of those experiences
which stand out from the background of the
stream of thought as definite things, the
first of which are as we maintain persons.
They possess, in addition to more or less

GENERAL. 53
clear outline, distinct features and vividness,
an emotional fringe ; they are not so clearly
separated from the background of the firma
ment of the soul as the lifeless objects which
are recognised later and which we term
things. But the whole of this objective world, be The
,. . . . "objective
it more or less distinct, is merely a selection world," a
i n n ¦ i -i • /> T selection.
unconsciously produced in early hie. It is
not a continuum, but a more or less discon
nected assemblage of special experiences
which possess certain attributes in common.
Two of these attributes, and probably the
most important, are their spatial and tem
poral appearance, the fact that they present
themselves in space and that they come and
go and return again in the course of time.
They are, so far as our subjective experi
ence is concerned, discontinuous, and give
rise to the conception of distance in space
or empty space, and of distance in time or
empty time.
In later life, and especially in scientific

54 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
Attempt research, we try to restore that continuity
to restore
contin- which the things of the objective world, in
consequence of their detachment from the
continuous background of consciousness, have
lost. This endeavour, so characteristic of ad
vanced science, is probably prompted by
and had its origin in the primordial con
tinuity of subjective experience, out of
which the objective world is merely a
selection. But it is quite evident that without this
separation of things and events in time and
space the intellectual process could never
begin, and that it practically ceases if and
when all separation in time and space is
abolished. An analogy may make this
clearer. The first intellectual achievements in
astronomy were based upon the observa
tion of detached stars, not of the whole of
the visible firmament. A result of this
selection in the study of the heavens was

GENERAL. 55
the creation of gravitational astronomy with
its conception of action at a distance between
detached bodies in space. This view may
be independently elaborated so as to form
a distinct science, but it does not embrace
all the phenomena of the starry heavens.
No note is taken in it, e.g., of the propaga
tion of light and heat ; none also of electri
cal phenomena ; still less does this science
concern itself with meteorological phenomena
such as envelop our planet.
But it was only by detaching certain Con
tinuum
definite classes of phenomena from the broken for
intel-
general aspect presented in nature that in- lectual progress.
tellectual progress was made possible. In
like manner the definite sensations which
cluster together and form what we term
external things, can be observed and studied
as an independent world which stands out
from the background of the field of con
sciousness ; although we must never forget
that, in the original sense of reality, they
have for us no other existence than that

56 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
remaining portion which, for the sake of
convenience, we leave out of consideration
in science and practice.

XI.
The task of genetic psychology of the
individual mind is to describe the different
stages through which a clear recognition of
the external world and a scientific know
ledge of it is acquired. It has, inter alia,
to show the part which memory plays in
bringing back into the field of consciousness
experiences which have disappeared, in con
nection with which it may be noted that,
without the forgetting or losing sight of
what at any definite moment fills our mind,
the intellectual process of analysis and syn
thesis would be as little possible as would
be the recognition of definite things with
out the notion of empty space, or that of
events if they were not separated by dis-

GENERAL. 57
tance in time ; and, in fact, as the practical
every-day conception of reality would be
without the accompanying conception of the
absence of reality, or nothingness.
But this and many other important points
must not detain us at present, as our object
is not to write even a meagre sketch of
psychology, but to apply those special
views explained in the foregoing pages to
a definite problem. The reader will have
already seen that our reflections so far lead
up to a broad distinction between two worlds
or orders of things, — the world of separately
definable things, which we term the outer
world, and the entire field of consciousness,
which we term the inner world. At the
same time, from the point of view we have
taken, this way of stating the matter is in
correct and misleading. And in so far as
the reader will also have guessed that this
broad distinction between two worlds corre
sponds in some way or other to the dis
tinction between the scientific and the

58 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
Hence religious aspect of things, he will have

arises

antithesis further inferred that the conflict which we
between
scientific meet with so frequently between science
religious and religion is traceable to the mistaken
view expressed by the words outer and
inner. We have indeed been at some pains to
convince ourselves that what we term the
outer world forms, from our human point
of view, only a part, and that a very small
part, of the whole field of consciousness
which we term the inner world, and to
which we, in adult life, continually return.
inner For us, the position of the matter is
world as
continu- exactly the opposite to the external aspect.
ing the
whole. The whole field of consciousness is the larger
and wider totality of all our experiences,
not only of those which we term physical,
but, including these, also of the varying
emotions, desires, and volitions which sur
round and accompany them. Within this
totality, what we term the physical world
is only a selected portion.

GENERAL. 59
It will therefore now be necessary to why we
reverse
examine how we come, in the course of our the
n . natural
mental development and education, to re- order.
verse this natural order of things and to
look upon that smaller and selected aggre
gate of experiences which we term sensa
tions, as being the larger Universe, within
the circumference of which each of us, as
an individual, occupies (with all its inner
life and the totality of its self and its con
sciousness) but an insignificant place.

XII.
This view, which accompanies us through
life and has been much strengthened
through the discoveries of science, must
have dawned on the infant mind as the
third important discovery in the progress
of its wakening intellectual life. According stages of
child's
to our view, the recognition of a personality mind.
or personalities constitutes the first distinct

60 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
appearance in the developing mind of a
definite external reality which stands out
from the background of the firmament of
the soul. Through continued intercourse,
varied and repeated, with these defined
realities, the child's mind is introduced to
lifeless things which do not possess that
emotional fringe or warmth of feeling con
nected with living things. A third stage
is reached when something intermediate
between the two classes of objects is re
cognised by the developing mind in its own
physical existence, in the shape of its body.
Only when this stage is reached can a clear
notion arise of a self as distinguished from
other selves and other things. At the
same time the attention of the mind is, to
a large extent, withdrawn from the general
flow of the primordial consciousness : the
original self sinks into the background,
and the whole field of consciousness may
at times be almost completely filled with
definite complexes of external sensations.

GENERAL. 61
In such moments a more or less complete
absorption in some external object may
take place in the child's mind, not unlike
that which may happen to us in adult life,
when, e.g., we are completely absorbed in
some representation on the stage, or when
we listen with closed eyes to some imposing
and wonderful performance of musical sound,
or when the astronomer, looking through
a telescope at the starry heavens, forgets
himself and everything else, his mind for
the moment completely absorbed in, or at
one with, the overwhelming spectacle of
the nocturnal firmament.
For the purposes of its later life this
third discovery in the course of its mental
history is of the greatest importance to the
developing mind both intellectually and
emotionally. It signifies the sinking into sinking of
subject-
the background of those purely subjective ivity into
feelings and desires which formed the ground.
totality of the experience of consciousness
in the earliest stages of waking life.

62 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
What become more and more important,
are things, lifeless and living, among which
the subjective mind with its bodily frame
is moving about, and to which it has to
accommodate itself.
Demands The practice of life now begins, with its
of practice. demands for definite and clear perception
of an outer world, and control of the self.
This definition and clear perception is the
beginning of practical knowledge as well
as of moral conduct.

XIII.
Thus it comes about, that when in adult
life we look at the world, it presents to us
an aspect entirely opposite to that which
greeted the infant mind on its entry. For
the latter, everything was indefinite, indis
tinct, and continually changing.
What we term sensations, in the narrower
• sense of the word, so far as they existed in

GENERAL. 63
the infant mind, were mixed with purely
subjective feelings, with desires and nascent
volitions. The mind was then what has
been termed "a presentation and motor
continuum." " The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose,
skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as
one great blooming buzzing confusion ; and
to the very end of life, our location of all
things in one space is due to the fact that
the original extent or bignesses of all the
sensations which came to our notice at once,
coalesced together into one and the same
space." 1
The whole object of instruction, and educa- Breaking
up of con-
tion seems to be to break up this continuum, tinuum.
this kaleidoscopic and rapidly changing aspect,
into definite impressions and experiences ; ,. to
contract through attention the field of mental
vision ; to arrest with the help of memory
what is fleeting, and to forget, for a time at
least, the connection in which the object of
1 William James, ' Principles of Psychology,' i. 488.

64 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
our discrimination stands with other objects,
and how it forms in the stream of conscious
ness only an insignificant item. How this
process of discrimination and of limitation of
attention and interest is based upon spatial
and temporal relations, upon distance and
intervals, upon forgetting and recovering by
memory, it is one of the tasks of psychology
to describe in detail. For us, it suffices to
note that these are some of the more im
portant features in the formation of our full-
grown view of the world.
But though theories of time and space and
memory are of no interest to us at present,
it is of importance to take special notice of
some of the definite habits of thought which,
through that educational process, we have
acquired, and which we practise also when,
in the secluded moments of inner reflection,
we try to regain the wider and deeper view
of things which embraces not only external
objects, but, with an equal right, that portion
of our experience which has not become in

GENERAL. 65
the same manner objective, communicable to
others, but which remains, as it were, our
private possession.
Feelings, desires, unsatisfied volitions, hopes,
and fears, crowd in upon our consciousness,
and strive as it were to attain admission
into a world of reality which, though dif
ferent, is no less truly real than the often
oppressive reality of our external surround
ings. If personality is the first introduction to
a separate world, and communion with other-
persons the second important factor in the=
gradual clearing of our impressions of this.
new world, the most important of all is
language — viz., the connection of definite Languag
sounds and words with definite sensations or
complexes of sensations. How this indispens
able mode of communication with others is
acquired by the child's mind, whether by
imitation or otherwise, is and will always
remain a mystery ; as indeed, in the history
of the human race, the first appearance of

66 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
language remains, in spite of the many
theories which have been put forward, a
miracle and a revelation. For it means,
no less in the life of every individual than
in that of the human race, the full awaken
ing of the intellect.
ArtiHciai At the same time this awakening of the
view of . . ... „ . „ .
things. intellect is also the beginning of an artificial
view of things, which we are apt to put in
the place of the original reality, the primor
dial stream of thought. Through the acqui
sition of language we come unawares under
the tyranny of words, signs, and symbols,
and it is with these rather than with the
original experiences and thoughts that we
become occupied.
This is shown by the fact that it is ex
tremely difficult to assign to many words,
which we are in the habit of using, any
definite meaning. It is in truth only when
we can point to a definite thing or phe
nomenon in space that we can be quite as
sured that what we mean is clearly defined.

GENERAL. 67
Thus it comes about that spatial location
and relations lie at the origin and bottom of •
all the thoughts which we can communicate to
others, and that these acquire, through this
property, a stronger impress of reality.
And the tendency of organised thought —
i.e., of scientific knowledge — is to reduce
every matter with which it deals to definite
spatial data and their connections. Even
logic itself can hardly do without symbols Spatial
taken from arithmetic, algebra, or geometry, iSm.
and geometry appears to have been the oldest
of the sciences.

XIV.
The process of selection of well - defined
sensations which occur again and again in
the same or similar aggregates, or which
follow each other in the same succession in
time, gives rise to two distinct conceptions
which involuntarily arise in the course of

68 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
early experience and are fixed by special
Substance- words and terms. These are the concep-
and cause. . „
tions of substance or matter and of cause
and effect. They are an unconscious ad
mission by the reflecting mind of the
"together" which single sensations in space
and time exhibit. They signify, as it were,
the desire to express in language not only
definite, isolated sensations and events which
are embedded in the stream of thought, but
pre-eminently also their connection and co
herence, in the shape of things and events.
They constitute a tacit admission that a mere
enumeration of isolated and detached data
does not do justice to, or exhaust the nature
of, our actual experiences. They suggest that
something is lost in the selecting, dividing,
and atomising process of attention, and that
expression must be given to the special kinds
of coherence that exist in the recurring com
plexes and successions of those data.
Attempt The mind involuntarily aims not only at
to express
unity. synthesis or putting together, but at the

GENERAL. 69
restoring of that unity which possesses im
mediate evidence to the original or synoptic
glance. And yet this search for the lost unity of
appearance, because it is expressed in lan
guage by a definite word, leads us to the
delusion that substance or matter is a definite
datum of consciousness similar to definite sen
sations of colour, sound, or touch, and prompts
the futile desire to find somewhere in the
things of the external world a special kernel
of reality which they do not possess.
No application of the process of selecting
and defining is of more importance in the
gradual development of the intellect, which
for us is identical with the ever increasing
clearness with which we observe the external
world of space, than that which takes place
in the clearer recognition of our own self Recogni
tion of
as a definite thing moving about among other self.
things and persons which are likewise in
motion. It is here and then that we ex
perience a definite sensation which is dis-

70 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
tinguished from what are usually termed
the sensations of the five senses.
This additional experience has frequently
been considered to constitute a sixth sense.
Resistance It is the sense of resistance and of corre-
and effort. sponding effort on our part. Whereas the
other senses, beginning with the sense of
sight and ending with that of taste, may be
roughly graduated according to the greater
or lesser degree to which they take us, as
it were, out of ourselves, making us forget
the subjectivity of all sensations and ex
periences in so far as they are a part of the
stream of thought, the sense of resistance
and effort brings home to us our own self
in an intensified, and at the same time nar
rowly contracted experience.
We now concentrate our attention in the
course of life more and more upon that
comparatively small portion of existence
which we call our Self in the midst of
Self and social surroundings, and which we inevitably
body. _ J
identify to a very large extent with our body.

GENERAL. 71
To what extent this identification takes
place in different minds is a question for
individual as distinguished from general
psychology. Thus we may ask the question
and receive from different persons different
answers. In thinking on past events in
your life in which you played a part, do
you or do you not see yourself, as it were,
in bodily form and in definite physical sur
roundings ? Are you able to think of your
self without bringing in the impressions of
your own bodily form in some shape or
other? It is quite clear that we cannot
think of other persons or things without
gathering up our thoughts and connecting
them into some physical form or figure.
But as soon as we realise this, we realise
also that we possess of ourselves a knowledge
of something which, though intimately con
nected with the bodily figure, is yet clearly
distinguished from it. This is, of course,
our primordial self, from which all conscious Primor
dial self.
life started.

72 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
Trained as we are through education and
the practice of life to conceive as a sub
stance the kernel of reality of external
things, we involuntarily desire also to con
ceive and represent to ourselves this ac
companiment of our physical frame as a
definite thing, though we distinguish it
from lifeless things or matter as something
less tangible, which we call mind.
That it has as little reality by itself as
matter must be quite evident from the
point of view which we have taken from
the beginning. It is merely an expression
of the totality of our experience, in which
the stream of thought is not lost, though
it passes away out of the field of conscious
ness ; in which the firmament of the soul
no more falls asunder into disconnected
particles than that of the physical heavens,
both being held together in a connected
whole, which we can only experience but
not define.

Matter

and mind. Matter and mind are only words which

GENERAL. 73
denote the coherence of things in space and
time, as also of the contents of that larger
experience which constitutes our primordial
self.

XV.
One of the most striking attributes which
cling to this conception of matter and mind
is this, that we, in thinking of either,
attach to it a greater importance, and as
it were a more solid reality, than we do to
the individual experiences of either the
smaller but more vivid field of sensations
in space, or the larger and less defined ex
periences in the stream of thought. These
sensations and experiences, detached and
fleeting as they are, present themselves as
possessed of a smaller degree of reality
than the substances which we conceive as
underlying them and holding them to
gether. From our point of view this signi-

74 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
fies only that the totality of any experience,
be it a cluster of sensations, a succession of
events, or the momentary aspect of our
mental firmament, is of more importance,
being more truly real, than the particles
into which we may, for the sake of con
venience, dissect it. This introduces a new
conception into our world of thought — viz.,
Appear- the distinction between appearance and
ance and
reality. reality, the notion of degrees of reality and
of the truly real, compared with which the
more lively and absorbing existences of the
moment afford only transient glimpses.
This conception gains enormous strength
from the fact that in ordinary life, and still
more in methodical and scientific thought
and practice, the clusters of external sensa
tions rivet our attention almost exclusively,
making us forget their origin as subjective
experiences or constituents in the continu
ous flow of thought, and divesting them of
that emotional fringe which would tend to
remind us of their origin and nature.

GENERAL. 75
This is pre-eminently the case when we
observe or think of other persons.
Though we acquire early the firm con
viction that other persons are possessed of
a purely internal and private experience
similar to our own, we know nothing of
this hidden life, except by inference, and
through their own speech. It becomes, for
all practical purposes, an accompaniment of
their bodily frame and figure, and not only
the popular mind, but even scientific re
search, is continually tempted to look for
this inner non-visible kernel of personality
as located somewhere within the physical
frame. For this search there is, as we have
already stated, no conclusive warranty. In
asmuch, however, as through inter-subjective
communion we gain the conviction that other
persons have sensations of things similar to
our own, we arrive at the inevitable conclu
sion that they derive this experience from
the same source as we do. Thus the whole

76 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
cluster, of external sensations stands out as
an external world, as a separate reality, of
which the images in our own and other
persons' consciousness is merely, as it were,
a duplicate, comparable to the reflection of
one and the same object in a number of
mirrors. It is only one step more in the completion
of that consistent picture of an outer world
of things and persons, if we look upon this
outer world as in time prior to the inner
world ; the object coming, as it were, before
its reflection in the mirror. , Although this
cannot be consistently upheld, it neverthe
less leads to the application of the formula
or category of cause and effect to the rela
tion which exists between the object and its
reflection. We thus carry through life the indestruc
tible conviction that outside of the stream of
consciousness, which is the origin of and really
constitutes the whole of reality so far as we
are conscious of it, this internal reality has

GENERAL. 77
a still deeper -lying origin in the existence
of an external reality which would abide
even if the whole of our stream of thought
should come to an end and the firmament
of our soul vanish into nothingness.

XVI.
In the foregoing we have merely traced
in outline the possible genesis of the vari
ous attributes which in the adult and
educated mind are connected with what we
popularly term reality or existence. That
this full-blown reality, which plays such an
important part in our practical life, is some
thing very different from the primordial
reality, the " cogitare " of Descartes, the
"stream of thought" of James, the "pres
entation and motor continuum " of Ward, or
the "firmament of the soul," as we have
termed it, is quite evident.
And it takes some effort for the adult

78 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
Effort to mind to realise that all the attributes which
source of this full-blown reality possesses are nowhere
else to be found, and have their origin no
where else than in this continuous stream
of thought in the widest sense of the word,
which constitutes our waking and conscious
life, and is, in fact, identical with our self.
The appearance of definite sensations, and
among them of those that are located in
space, which disappear, leaving faint traces
behind them by which they can be recog
nised as they return, the clustering together
of them in definite aggregates, the impres-
siveness they attain in persons who surround
us, the distinction of these from lifeless
things, the identification of our own bodies,
the growing awareness of the parity between
other persons and ourselves, the search and
discovery of a something which holds ex
ternal things together, the notion of sub
stance in its twofold form of matter and
mind, the alternation of presence and absence
of reality, or of something and nothing, the

GENERAL. 79
conception of cause and effect, and the mis
taken application of this formula to the
relation of reality and appearance, — all these,
and many other conceptions with which we
work in daily life, appear gradually within
the continuous stream of thought, and
attract our attention to such a degree that
their origin is wellnigh forgotten.
And yet it has been the tardy recognition
of this first beginning of all our definite
thought, contrasted with the ultimate reality
assumed for these conceptions within the con
fines of waking consciousness, that has been
one of the principal results of philosophical
research, and the indispensable preparation for
a correct estimate of the nature, the ap
plicability, and the value of both scientific
and those other less methodical regions of
thought which we term ethical, poetical, and
religious. It will now be our task to apply the view
so far adopted and cleared up to a compre
hension of this partial aspect which those

80 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
different forms of thought have developed,
dwelling first pre-eminently upon scientific
thought and then upon religious thought as
presenting a marked contrast, which has
frequently led to conflict.

PART II.
SCIENCE. I.
In the foregoing we have learnt that all
thought and knowledge, of whatever nature
it may be, works with experiences con
tained in the stream of thought which has
its beginning in the narrow field of con
sciousness during infant life. This stream
of thought gains in width, diversity, dis
tinctness, and impressiveness all through
the waking periods of our earthly exist
ence. Enriched through memory and imagina
tion, fixed and clarified through attention,
enormously widened through communion
with others, the stream of thought, or the

82 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
Data of firmament of the soul, contains all the data
thought. and all the material for the thought and
work of our whole life ; and the results of
these must again find a place within the
boundaries of the stream, outside of which
they have for us no existence whatever.
We have also seen how, during the years
of childhood and adolescence, those experi
ences which in their totality form our prim
ordial self become differentiated. The most
"important differentiation, for the practical
purposes of this life, is that which sets apart
the well - defined and vivid impressions of
our senses, which not only attract our early
attention, but are clearly marked off from
the background through two distinct char
acteristics ; they are more easily preserved
^.nd recalled through memory, and they form
the data for our communication with others
through language.
Most of them are distributed through
time and space. They have a definite loca
tion and they belong to a temporal series;

SCIENCE. 83
and the first of the characteristics men
tioned above, that of definiteness, is secured
by fixed location in space and definite
position in time.
It is entirely through these that we learn
to fix our thoughts, to communicate them
to others, and to receive communication from
them ; and though in general spatial and
temporal location assist each other, it is an
extraordinary fact that time without space
is capable of giving rise to a language of
its own.
This is the language of music, which to Peculiar
case of
many persons seems able to serve as the music.
vehicle of transmission of definite thoughts
which belong to a region of experience
quite different from that which is revealed
to us through the senses of sight and touch
and resistance. It forms, in fact, a revela
tion of its own, affording an insight into a
more hidden range of inner experience. It
is, however, well to note that all communi
cation, whether through pictorial and graphi-

84 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
cal representation or through language or
through the world of sound, depends upon
a selection of experiences and a detach
ment in our mind of these selected data of
consciousness from the general flow of
thought or the background of the firma
ment of the soul, and that the latter must
be, for a time at least, forgotten.
This process of detachment works so effec
tively in the development of our intellectual
and practical life that it becomes, as it were,
a second and independent mode of looking
at the world.
Instead of its leading us back to the
primordial experience in which all sensa
tions, feelings, and volitions are mingled
together, this latter appears to the adult
mind as a kind of chaos, compared with
which the selected portion of definite sensa
tions and perceptions stands out as an
Definite orderly, well-arranged Cosmos, composed of
realities become definite recognisable things, which possess
Cosmos. an individuality, and more or less permanent

SCIENCE. 85
properties. With this order of things we
connect the conception of reality, in the
common-sense meaning of the word.
Behind it there still lingers the chaotic Their
J 1 i r> i n source a
and less defined stream of thought, possess- chaos.
ing, as it seems to us, a smaller amount of
reality ; and it is only in isolated moments
of our life, or only for a few favoured minds,
that this half- forgotten background attains
to such vividness that the conception of a
different and higher reality than that of
the external world dawns upon us.
It is pre - eminently the external world
that is the subject of all methodical and
communicable knowledge and gives rise to
what we term science. This deals almost Science
deals with
exclusively with distribution in space and the defin-
succession in time as the properties of
definite things and events. It relies on,
and works with, the atomising or dissecting
process. It creates, by a further process of
selection, out of the totality of purely ex-
. ternal experiences, a still narrower order of

86 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
Primary sensations. It divides the properties of
secondary things into two classes, termed, since the
time of Locke, primary and secondary. The
primary properties have been gradually re
duced to location and change of location in
space, and to the velocity with which such
change taktes place. To these two ultimate
properties of position and motion in space
there has been added, after long periods of
tentative theories, a third ultimate property
— that of mass or inertia, which, defined for
scientific use in terms of distance and time,
presents itself to the popular mind as sub
stance or as the kernel of outer reality.

II.
It has been found through experience
that, working only with these few strictly
defined properties of what we term matter,
the human mind is able to build up a com
plete edifice of abstract thought, and that

SCIENCE. 87
this process reveals to us a large and, as it Abstractworld of
were, new world, which is not imaginary, but science
. . . _ verifiable,
can be in many instances verified by subse
quent observation.
This achievement of the human mind was
first made secure through the calculations
and predictions of phenomena and events
in the stellar world, the objects of which
possess the simplest and most easily defined
locations in time and space. Experiences
which to the untutored senses and intellect
seem undefined have through this process
of dissection and calculation been resolved
into well-arranged groups of ..definite sensa
tions ; and the conviction has arisen in the
scientific and popular mind that cosmic
order without end exists beyond the con
fines to which, through size or minuteness,
our actual observations are limited.
As this process of extending knowledge its exten
sion sup-,
into regions formerly inaccessible to human posed an
endless
thought seems to have no limit and no end, process.
a popular notion has grown up that every-

88 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
thing that is still obscure and undefined
in the field of consciousness will in the
course of time be attacked and clarified
by it.
This view, which has in modern times
been held also by some scientific authorities,
is now more or less abandoned by those
who clearly understand the origin and
characteristics of scientific thought, namely
that it rests, as we stated, upon a process
But sub- of selection, and in fact of very narrow
jective whole nc
grasped.

jective whole not selection, within the whole field of con

sciousness with its manifold experiences.
The fact that the elements out of which
scientific thought builds up its edifice of
knowledge are detached data of experience,
introduces into the earlier chapters of every
scientific province of thought a property
Discon- which we may term discontinuity. This
jtinuity. contrasts very markedly with the original
continuum of presentations — be they sensory
or motor — which we have described as a
continuous stream or flow. Thus, e.g., the

SCIENCE. 89
earlier chapters of physical astronomy deal
only with isolated points or bodies in space ;
the natural sciences only with fairly well-
defined species of living things ; chemistry
with a limited number of well-defined ele
ments ; and lastly, psychology with distinct
mental faculties or with simple ideas.
A second and higher stage was reached
when the conviction forced itself upon
naturalists that these detached and seem
ingly isolated elements and phenomena do
not represent the actual world, but are
abstractions of the human mind, or arti
ficially prepared objects of research.
A highest principle of thought appeared
which has increasingly governed scientific
research without being able to fully establish
its credentials. This principle is the prin- Principle
of con-
ciple of continuity, which is sometimes tinuity.
upheld merely as a result of experience,
and sometimes stated as a necessity of
thought. It has presented itself to the
scientific mind in two distinct aspects.

90 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
The first may be expressed by saying:
Space is a plenum filled continuously with
some kind of matter. The second is the
doctrine of evolution, of gradual transition
in time.
Thus, although it is impossible for scien
tific investigation to start or to be carried
on without the dissecting or atomising pro
cess, there is an equally important tendency
to bring things which have been separated
together again, and to restore what seems
to be their natural order and interconnec
tion in the place of an artificial order which
is assumed only as a transition stage for
purposes of research, but which is pre-emi
nently perpetuated in the artificial world
with which the progress of human industry
and culture has everywhere surrounded us.

SCIENCE. 91

III.
But here it is necessary to dwell at some
length on this conception of Continuity,
the importance of which has probably, in
recent times, been exaggerated.
First of all we must note that the two Twomeanings
distinct meanings which continuity embraces of con
tinuity.
are not always clearly kept asunder ; they
were familiar indeed to philosophers long
before scientific thought had made use of
them and defined them more clearly, — the
well-known Latin phrase of the Horror
vacui and the not less known adage Natura
non facit saltum giving expression to both.
Expressed in plain English, they signify Absence of
gaps and
the absence of gaps and the absence of absence of
breaks.
breaks. It seems natural to the thinking mind
to look for that absence of emptiness in
things external which it experiences in its
own* flow of thought, in what has been

92 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
termed the " Sensory and motor continuum."
For although this continuum seems to admit
of distinct gaps or intervals which are
termed unconsciousness, the continuum of
thought is, in some mysterious way, restored
through memory.
Thus it may be that it is a primordial
requisite of human thought, or an axiom,
which leads us everywhere to interpolate
between apparently detached and separated
observations, some interlying reality. This
search has been almost everywhere rewarded
by the discovery of hidden existences, with
which the gaps are filled up. Thus the
outer world or space is now generally con
sidered to be a plenum.
With the second form of discontinuity the
case is, however, quite different. Though in
scientific thought we have been taught to
look everywhere for slow and gradual transi
tions from one event to another in time, or
from one quality to another in space, this
kind of continuity does not exist in • our

SCIENCE. 93
consciousness as it develops through infancy,
childhood, and adolescence. In fact, one of
the main incidents in this development is the
emergence of discontinuities — i.e., of breaks
in the continuum of presentations. With With
. . . . breaks,
these breaks, or sudden transitions, science is science
unable to deal. Science can either describe deal.
them merely as facts, or substitute for them
some corresponding property which permits
of a continuous, gradual transition from
one phenomenon to another in time and
space. Only in this way can the processes
of calculation be successfully applied. This
translation of unmeasurable and incomparable
events and phenomena into imaginary meas
urable and comparable quantities, has led to
the discovery, through calculation and re-
translation, of new phenomena, previously un
known, and this has generated and strength
ened the belief that the view which science
has substituted for our popular experiences
represents the real or objective state of
things, compared with which the everyday

94 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
view is merely subjective. This has found
expression in the doctrine, mentioned above,
of primary and secondary qualities of matter.
Thus colours, so different in their appearance
to the human eye, are represented and treated
by science as vibrations which differ only in
frequency ; musical notes are treated in the
same way, the continuous series in the first
case consisting of wave motions in the
ether, in the second case in the air ; odours
and tastes are represented in science by
chemical reactions ; and heat and cold, in
stead of being contrasts, form simply one
and the same mode of motion exhibiting
differences characterised only by arithmetical
or geometrical quantities which form a con
tinuous series.

IV.
In opposition to this view of science,
which has also, to some extent, penetrated

SCIENCE. 95
into popular thought, it is important to
insist that the primordial stream of thought, They are
in the
or the firmament of the soul, presents marked primordial
. . -. . . ¦. , stream of
discontinuities, and that it is only through thought.
them that clear observation, definite recol
lections or memory pictures, and thought
itself, can exist and develop. It may be
quite correct to say that the infant con
sciousness is, as Schleiermacher termed it,
a Chaos, in which sensations, feelings, desires,
and volitions are mingled, presenting no
definite outline, no spatial or temporal loca
tions. But not to speak of the advanced
stage of logical and scientific clarity, the
common-sense view as regards mind presents
definite colours, sounds, and other sensations,
and sudden transitions, which are indeed
surrounded by fringes, or the background of
indefinite states of sensuous experience, of
feelings and desires, but which nevertheless,
as we have seen, stand out from this back
ground as a separate world, as a definite
order of experiences which can be studied

96 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
by itself and connected through thought into
an independent structure which we term the
outer world.
So far, the common-sense and the scientific
view march together ; but when the latter
attempts, for the purposes of increasing and
applying knowledge, to reduce all sudden
transitions and qualitative differences to
measurable and imperceptibly graduated
quantities, it steps beyond the common-
sense view of life and becomes unable to
grasp in their totality and natural appear
ance those experiences which alone give
interest, variety, and enjoyment to our
human existence.
For this existence, surprises are indis
pensable, and the monotony of scientific
constructions would be intolerable except
for those rare minds which are engaged in
producing it and delight in the result of an
intellectual achievement.
But in addition to this, scientific thought
itself, in spite of the adage Simplex sigillum

SCIENCE. 97
veri, has not succeeded in bridging over the
more important discontinuities which nature
exhibits. Not only is it obliged, as soon as it
has filled space with a continuous substance Spatial
discon-
of some kind, to introduce discontinuities tinuities.
into it, in the shape of particles, vortices,
strains, or other constructions, not only is
motion or change inconceivable without
something that moves and changes, but
the ever renewed endeavour to extend
the purely mechanical view is continually
baulked by the phenomena of life and still Life and
conscious-
more by those of consciousness : they not ness.
only exist for the inner and primordial aspect
of things, but show themselves also to the
external view on which science depends.
The argument that the purely mechanical
explanation of physical, chemical, and physi
ological phenomena is only in its infancy,
and that its capabilities cannot be measured,
is correct or incorrect according to the posi
tion which we take up.
For the phenomena of life, as well as of
G

98 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
consciousness, are incapable of being described
in the fundamental terms with which the
mechanical view operates or of being meas
ured in the units which that view employs.
They have no defined location in space, but
only correspond with, or accompany, certain
very complicated structures which cannot be
mechanically built up. These structures, be
they the germs of organic life, or the full-
grown organism, or certain definite organs
such as the brain, are totalities, possessing
an individual existence which separates them
from lifeless and inanimate things ; and it is
only by again and again contemplating them
as wholes that we become aware of and are
impressed with their real nature. In fact,
they belong to an order of things with which
-each one of us became originally acquainted
through personal contact; and the real be
ginning and explanation of them seems, if
anywhere, to lie for the human mind in the
conception or category of personality. To
maintain that through prolonged study of

SCIENCE. 99
mechanical phenomena in plants or animals,
living or dead, even with enormously im
proved mechanical devices and instruments,
this order of things could be reached, is
similar to the assumption of one who should
fancy that by counting only the series of
square numbers he could, by going on long
enough, cover the whole field of ordinary
numbers.

Closely connected with the conception of
continuity — i.e., of the absence of gaps and
breaks, in the external world, or in the
course of nature, is another conception which
has gradually fastened itself on the scientific
mind and has also penetrated popular thought
to a very large extent. This is the concep- Uniform
ity of
tion of the uniformity of nature. This ex- nature.
pression gives rise to various misunderstand
ings. These have, so far as scientific thought

100 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
is concerned, been to a great extent removed
in the better scientific manuals of the present
day. In the popular mind there still lurks
a conception of the natural order of things
which is formed by analogy with the human
order of a state or society consisting of many
members which are, as it were, kept in subjec
tion by definite statutes that can be followed,
but are also not infrequently broken. There
are thus two different arrangements think
able, that of disorder and that of order, and
two factors — the members of society and the
statutes and written laws which are to be
followed. Transferred to the things of
nature, this would mean that there are
ultimate elements and that there are definite
relations to which they are subjected.
The uniformity of nature in this case would
mean that the laws or relations of things are
in some ways fixed and unalterable, and that
the ultimate things and particles of matter
are in some indefinable manner forced to
follow them.

SCIENCE. 101
Out of this dualistic conception has arisen
the popular notion of the inexorable laws of
nature, into which things are cast as into
a network, which keeps them in order.
This primitive view, the origin of which is
not far to seek, but which does not interest
us at present, is now quite abandoned. The
laws of nature are nothing but the expres
sion of the nature of things themselves —
i.e., of the ultimate particles of the material
world which possess definite measurable
quantities of motion ; and uniformity of
nature signifies simply the conservation of
mass and motion, both measured by well-
defined methods. And here we must not
forget that these elemental factors in which
science pictures to itself and constructs its
system of thought are abstractions of the
human mind, that they are in their primi
tive nature nowhere to be actually found
through human observation, but that they
are an artificial product of human thought,
by means of which it can define observable

102 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
facts and events, as well as in many cases
calculate and predict them.
inappii- Now it is evident that a view of this
cable to _ _ .
the prim- kind is quite inapplicable to the primordial
reality, reality, which we have described as the flow
of thought or the firmament of the soul.
This is rather characterised by an absence
of uniformity, by continual change and by
momentary aspects, which never recur so as
to present themselves in exactly the same
way. Nor is it possible to analyse the totality
of this process — i.e., of the moving field of
consciousness — into elemental, definable, and
measurable constituents, the nature of which
is simple and which present a definite loca
tion and measurable modes of motion. These
properties belong only to that selected por
tion of sensations which we term the outer
world, and which we can locate in time and
Actual space. And even there our methods forsake
complexes not wholly us whenever we wish to deal with any
analys- able. intricate complex possessing many proper-

SCIENCE. 103
ties and exhibiting many aspects — i.e., when
we deal with natural things. For the real
nature of things as distinguished from that
imaginary or abstract picture which we, in
scientific research, substitute for it, reveals
itself to us only if we look at it as a whole
and in its natural and ever varying situation
and environment.
This will probably in general be admitted
so far as living things are concerned. For
the history of natural science itself — i.e., of
all the sciences connected with the living
creation — shows clearly how progress has
only been possible by again and again
returning to the observation of the world
as it is, by stepping out of the laboratory
and the dissecting-room into the open air,
forgetting for the time at least the abstract
methods, the images and models, the selected
and prepared specimens of the scientific
student. But also where we have to do This true-
even of
with lifeless objects, the natural state differs lifeless
. , things, .-;
very widely from the artificial state with

104 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
which most of the products of scientific
research and invention are occupied. The
latter produce an artificial world which
may be of great practical interest and use,
and which testifies to the ingenuity of the
human intellect, but which leads us away
from a comprehension of the nature of
things. This nature of things stands much
nearer to the artist who lives and works in
communion with nature, and whose creations
must lose and have always lost their inspira
tion as often as any artificial aspect, or what
is termed style, has attained to an undue
influence.

VI.

If we realise with how small a number of
data the scientific construction and compre
hension of the external world operates, and
how even this external world, which forms
only a narrowly-selected portion of our total
experience, exhibits an enormous variety of

SCIENCE. 105
phenomena which the exact treatment of
science cannot reach, we are forced to the
conclusion that the so-called uniformity of
nature, or the inexorable laws, denote a
conception which it is at least premature to
apply to the whole of existence — be that the
events in space and time, or the still larger
circumference of our conscious experience.
The fact that nearly all exact thinking,
all definitions and calculations, all practical
applications, move within a very narrow
sphere of ideas, both so far as the outer
world and so far as the much larger world of
thought is concerned, but that within this
very narrow sphere those ideas rule, so to
speak, supreme, deludes even the popular
mind into the belief that their verdict is
final. And so it is if we consider merely why
scientific
the affairs of this life and of our practical ideas are
ill so imPres_
work on this earth. They absorb almost the Sive.
entire attention of most of us : the necessi
ties of bare existence leave little space and
time for inner reflection and contemplation,

106 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
success in life depending increasingly on
methodical training, on concentration and
specialisation of attention.
Early instruction in childhood has taught
us to look upon ourselves, including the whole
of our field of consciousness, as units among
a great number of other persons ; upon the
whole of the human race as one only among
the innumerable specimens of animal creation ;
and upon 'the whole of this as a very small
portion of terrestrial phenomena. Still fur
ther — our planet itself is only one in an in
numerable crowd of other worlds, in which
it almost disappears through insignificance.
The whole of this is comprised in the still
more overwhelming conception of immeasur
able space which embraces, as it were, every
thing. This process goes more and more to
convince us of the unimportance of experi
ences which belong to each one of us as a
private possession, and forces us to assume
that those uniformities which have been
discovered in the all-embracing universe of

SCIENCE. 107
space, so far as it is accessible to our obser
vation, must be the primordial and highest ,
laws of existence.
We have thus two distinct worlds or Two
. distinct
orders of existence to deal with. The first worlds,
. „ . each con-
is the entire stream of consciousness or the taining
changing firmament of the soul : it contains, tamed.
as a very small portion only, those elemen
tary sensations of sight, touch, and sound,
out of which common-sense builds up the
external world, and science, with a still
greater restriction of fundamental data, its
edifice of methodical thought, its picture or
model of the universe. We have, secondly,
this external world in which our own per
son, including our entire stream of thought,
appears as a mere speck. And it depends
upon the position we take up whether the
first or the second of these existences im
presses us as possessed of the fuller amount
of reality. Each contains the other within
its circumference, and is itself contained in
the circumference of the other.

108 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
Which is The stream of consciousness includes the
the larger
depends entire outer world of space and time as a
on the
point of thought or a mental experience embedded

view.

in the surrounding background and flow of
other sensations, thoughts, feelings, desires,
and volitions. And vice versd, the external
world or the universe includes all living
beings which exhibit conscious life as
phenomena surrounded in time and space
by innumerable inanimate and lifeless things
which fill space and time.
Each of these two aspects of reality
contains a profound mystery, which we may
Transition describe in few words as the transition
from
either to from either of them into the other.
the other. The transition from the inner world of
consciousness into the outer is effected in
the early years of our earthly existence
through the mysterious influence of other
persons. Personality opens to us the view
into an outer world of beings similar to
ourselves and of countless other objects.
The adult mind, rising from the common-

SCIENCE. 109
sense view into that of science, begins with
simple elements of thought, and constructs
more and more complicated aggregates
through which it' is able to explain to
itself what it terms "the nature of things."
In this ascending series it meets with that
same mystery which in an unexplained
manner revealed to us the outer world, —
the mystery of life and, in its highest form,
of personality.
To the inner world, external reality seems
to contain something which holds together
those clusters of sensations which we term
things and the knowledge of which we
seem to possess in common with other
persons : this something is matter, for which,
as Berkeley told us, we can find no separate No separ-
ate idea
idea or experience in the stream of our 0f matter.
thoughts. For the external point of view, the con
centration of certain elements into definite
centres, the existence of animated things,
the very kernel of their reality, remains

110 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
Nor yet of equally hidden. This is mind, to the con-
substance, ception of which as substance Hume ex
tended Berkeley's criticism of matter. The
Bond of conception of personality contains for our
person- earthly experience both of these attributes
joined together in an inexplicable manner
as soul and body.

VII.

Expiana- In the foregoing discussion we have fre-
tion and .
¦descrip- quently used the term explanation. In
modern times an argument has been put
forward and accepted by many that the
object of science is merely to describe
natural things and events completely and
in the simplest manner possible. Others
have maintained that this is too narrow a
definition , of the aim of science ; they hold
that science has not only to describe but
also to explain the objects and processes of
nature — i.e., to make us understand them.

tion.

SCIENCE. Ill
If we consider the point raised more closely,
we find that the difference in the two views
is more apparent than real.
To describe a thing or an event means
ultimately to give to the mind a clear and
comprehensible view of it ; this is usually
attained by a picture, an image, or a model
which, if not actually exhibited or con
structed, is yet so simple that the person
to whom the description is given can con
strue or represent it in imagination, behold
ing it as it were with his mind's eye — i.e.,
putting it together through well - known
memory pictures, and in consequence making
it easy to hold it fast by memory and call
it up when required.
As the mind can only clearly visualise a
comparatively small complex of sensations,
a description is better in proportion, to its
simplicity. It is, however, maintained that for the
purpose of prediction of phenomena and for
that of discovery of unknown facts and

112 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
things, this process of simple description is
not enough, for by and in it we isolate
things and events and remove them out of
their natural connection, divesting them at
the same time of their complexity. An
explanation requires us not only to define
things and picture them so that we can
grasp and remember their features, but to
bring them also into contiguity with other
things and events in time and space.
Two Thus, to describe and to explain any
different processes, natural event or object, as for instance a
rainbow, are two different processes of
thought. A photograph or a picture can
do the former better than any number of
words : the latter, i.e., the explanation,
requires us to bring the thing which is
observed or described into connection with
other phenomena which preceded it and other
things that surround it, such as, e.g., the
falling drops of rain and the rays of the sun.
These contiguities in time and space are, in
the case of most phenemona, primarily hidden

SCIENCE. 113
from our view, and the process of explanation
consists mostly in discovering and describing
these hidden connections. And the explan
ation is more satisfactory and convincing
the wider it is — i.e., the larger the surround
ing area of space or period of time that it
comprises. A description not only containing the identical
if corn-
object or event described, but extending also piete.
to the environment and the historical ante
cedents, would be as complete an explanation
as we could desire. Every description or
explanation remains, however, incomplete ;
to become complete it should really com
prise the whole universe, allotting to every
.special thing or event its exact location in
space and time.
Such completeness is unattainable to the But com
pleteness
human mind, which accordingly has to sub- unattain
able.
stitute other means by which to satisfy
this desire to see things explained, or to
understand them.
The manifold features of existence, the
H

114 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
endless variety of colour, shape, sound, in
their never-ending change, must in some way
or other " contract into a span," so that they
may be grasped by the human eye or the
human intellect ; and this contracted image
or symbol must give the impression of com
pleteness, of indicating, suggesting, or em
bracing a totality : in the highest sense the
totality of everything — the Universe, the
All. The human mind possesses two very
Abstract different means of achieving this. The first
thought _
and is abstract- thought, the second the creation
artistic creation, of the artist.
It is only by learning and applying the
abstract notions invented in actual inter
course with others and made precise by
science, that we are able, even in common
life, to thread our way through the intricacies
which surround us, and gradually awaken
from the bewilderment which must character
ise our earliest thoughts and desires, and out
of which a large proportion of our fellow-men
never find their way.

SCIENCE. 115

VIII.
Description in the narrower sense leads to
vision, be this physical or mental ; explana
tion makes us understand things, bringing
them into connection with each other and
subjecting them to the process of thought.
This possesses a movement of its own, and
through this movement leads us beyond the
contracted region of what we can, at any
moment, actually observe and experience.
But whilst description and artistic repre
sentation excel through limitation and give
us pleasure and satisfaction through compact
ness and completeness within that narrow
region which our minds can at one moment
grasp and survey, the ever unfinished pro
cesses of thought and lines of reasoning lead
us into new regions of imagination, which in
many cases reveal facts and events otherwise
hidden from us. The limitless possibilities
of trains of thought once started would, how-

116 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
ever, lose themselves in endless wanderings
unless they were governed by some strict
rule. Such is found or suggested mostly by
observation and experience, rarely by purely
logical thinking.
To become useful the rule must be clearly
defined; and then it leaves by its simplicity
the wealth and fulness of actual experience
far behind it ; it becomes a skeleton or a
network, the mere texture, not the real
essence of actual things.
But as it is easily grasped, retained through
memory and recalled, it acquires for those
minds which use it habitually the impression
of a greater reality than that possessed by
the fleeting occurrences of the moment, or
the casual features of local happenings. In
Frame- this way this skeleton or framework of the
work of i-i
the world world which surrounds us appears to us as
taken for
interpre- the essence of its reality, as its hidden nature,
tation of , „ . .
reality, and from being a mere abstraction it rises
to the dignity of being conceived as an in
terpretation of reality. Common-sense, with

SCIENCE. 117
its fundamental but acquired habits of divid
ing the field of consciousness into outer
and inner, and still more the abstractions
and refinements of scientific thought, give us
an explanation or interpretation of our ex
perience which seems to possess more per
manence and more reality than this experi
ence itself.
In using the word interpretation, we feel
that we have imperceptibly glided into a
different line of thought.
To interpret means to us something more To inter
pret is
than to explain, it adds something to a more than
to explain.
simple explanation. The question arises,
What is this something which is added ?
Two answers may be given. We may in
quire into the meaning of a statement, and
we may desire to understand the purpose of
an event. Both of these contain a reference
to something lying outside of a mere state
ment of fact and even of its explanation,
however complete these may be. They con
tain a reference to ourselves, the observing

118 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
and thinking mind. They bring the purely
sensuous or intellectual analysis of a fact or
an event into connection with the emotional
side of our nature, or, to use our original
terminology, with that background of the
firmament of the soul which is made up of
feelings, desires, and volitions.
As the latter cannot be as clearly defined,
though they are quite as real as the im
pressions we receive through our senses, or
the abstracts we form in logical thought,
they have been discarded in purely scien
tific treatment. The question of the value
to us of the things and events in the ex
ternal world, with that of the end or purpose
of things, forms no subject of the scientific in
vestigation of nature or of natural knowledge.
Nevertheless, these questions always recur,
and are apt to interfere with what we con
sider the calm and dispassionate view of
scientific thought.
It is not difficult to see how this desire of
knowing the meaning and purpose of things

SCIENCE. 119
has arisen, and how these conceptions form
for us necessary and irremovable attributes
of reality. We have been introduced into
the world of existences outside of our own
self through the early communion with other
persons ; personality will always cling for us
to the highest forms of reality; and the
attributes of personality will again and again
intrude themselves into our thoughts about
external or lifeless things which we have
learnt to distinguish as forming the outer
world of our senses.
Now among these attributes, those which
we term emotional are among the earliest
to greet us in our infant existence. The
expressions of joy or sorrow, of pain or
pleasure, in those persons with whom we
are in continuous communion, are almost as
clear and vivid to us as our own feelings of
pain or pleasure.
Further, we early learn that these personal
realities which surround us have a movement
of their own, which leads to definite ends :

120 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
it is purposive. The first and fullest ex
amples of reality which greet us appear thus
as standing in emotional and volitional con
nection with the things of the outer world.
And as we transfer colours, sounds, and
bodily feelings which are purely subjective,
on to the things, and call them their pro
perties, in the same way, though in a less
distinct and definite manner, we transfer the
feelings of pleasure or pain and the interests
interpre- of persons on to the things of the external
tationbrings in world, calling them beautiful or ugly, pleas-
meaning
and value, ing or displeasing, useful or harmful ; in fact
we invest them with meaning and value.

PART III.
RELIGION.

In the first section of this Essay we laid the Recapitu
lation.
psychological basis for the consideration of
two aspects of the world which we term the
Scientific and the Religious. Both these
aspects spring from the common-sense view
which we unconsciously adopt in the early
years of our earthly existence.
In the second section we were almost ex
clusively occupied with showing in outline
how the scientific view has arisen and been
developed in the course of its long history.
We have seen that it is based on a process
of selection, that it deals with a restricted
and clearly defined portion of the total field

122 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
of consciousness as it accompanies us through
life, the whole at once forming our self and
containing all reality in whatever terms or
words we may describe it.
Common-sense has, without scientific aid,
already effected a differentiation or selection
of the total content of our field of conscious
ness, inasmuch as it distinguishes those ex
periences which we have in common, or be
lieve we have in common, with other persons
from those others which form by far the
larger portion of the total field, and which
we consider to be pre - eminently our own
private possession.
This we regard as different from that of
other persons, though this difference is not
so great that communication with them co n-
cerning this portion becomes impossible. Yet
whereas the former or selected portion stands
out as it were, and is accordingly termed the
Outer World, the remaining larger portion
forms a kind of background, an individual
possession of our self.

RELIGION. 123
We have seen how Science carries this
selection still further, limiting its view to
such among the data of outer experience as
can be located in space and time, clearly
defined, and reduced to a small number of
measurable quantities. With other data of
our outer experience, notably with the quali
tatively different impressions of our senses,
Science deals by inventing complexes which
differ only quantitatively in their properties
and their arrangement.
By means of this process of selection, which
starts unconsciously in our acquisition of the
common-sense view of things and is carried
further and made more precise in scientific
thought, the mind acquires certain concep
tions or abstract ideas, which, so far as we
know, could not be formed if the complete
stream of thought, or the entire and changing
firmament of the Soul, always absorbed our
attention. Of these conceptions we have pointed out
some as fundamental in the formation of our

124 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
common-sense view of the world and of life.
Such are in the first place the difference of
subject and object— further, an altered and
fuller conception of reality made precise and
defined through its contrary conception of
nothingness. Then we have the conceptions of causation,
of continuity, of substance, of matter and
mind, of natural laws and of uniformity of
nature. All these conceptions are ultimately con
nected with spatial properties, and more or
less, but probably not so intimately, with the
temporal series of events, which we however
cannot bring within the range of precise
definition without a spatial representation.
With these conceptions we are not only able
to describe things and events, but also to
explain them — i.e., to bring them into a con
nection which is not immediately visible or
observable. This introduces us to a different
order of things from that in which they
actually present themselves to us.

RELIGION. 125
Being more permanent, more precise and
simpler, and in consequence more easily com
municated to others, it acquires in our esti
mation a different kind of reality, being as
it were the network or framework in and
around which the fleeting panorama of our
manifold experiences glides past our " inward
eye." But on this road of description and ex
planation we go a step further, and desire
to have an interpretation of the external subjective
. .... interpre-
world or the Universe in its relation to our tation of
own selves which are included m it. In verse.
doing so we transcend the limits of external
observation and bring in imperceptibly a
reference to our personal feelings, desires,
and volitions. »
Science, in the strictest sense of the word, Rejected
. . . by strict
rejects this reference as an intrusion, but is science.
continually brought face to face with it
through the peculiar behaviour of things
which belong to the living and animated
world.

126 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
These seem to obey, in addition to the
laws of nature, another rule which we term
the end, aim, or purpose of their conduct.
As Science rejects this aspect as undefinable
by its own categories of thought, but as
nevertheless this' aspect presents itself con
tinually, a special study is required which
deals with it exclusively.
ideal or We will term this, for the moment, the
Spiritualaspect of Ideal or Spiritual aspect of things, and with
things. it we shall be occupied in this third section.
It will form, as it were, a counterpart to
the second section.

II.

In dealing with this background of our
conscious and changing experience we are
forced to use such terms and words as have
been coined in our communication with others,
and which can be traced almost exclusively
to those definite sensations on which the

RELIGION. 127
common-sense and scientific views are based Want of
and elaborated. Thus, what the common- language
sense view calls the inner life or world, is it.
described nearly exclusively in borrowed
terms. Language indeed possesses a com
paratively small number of words which
seem to point for their origin to something
which is not clearly and compactly repre
sented in the sensuous world ; but this small
vocabulary lacks precision, and in consequence
cannot by itself lead to that degree of pre
cise knowledge which common-sense, as well
as science, aims at, and to a large extent
attains. There is indeed, as already mentioned, Except,
for some,
one peculiar form of expression, one power- that of
music.
ful means of communication given to us, in
musical sounds and their composition ; and
to many persons this affords a means of ex
pression and communication within the region
of emotions, feelings, longings, and desires.
This form of expression, this peculiar lan
guage of sound, stands quite apart, reveals

128 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
But this a world of its own, and refuses to be trans-
not trans
latable lated into ordinary speech.
intoordinary Leaving this out of consideration for the
SDG6C1I present, we may lay down the proposition
that the abstract conceptions which we have
acquired through common -sense, and made
more precise through science, also govern
unconsciously that region of thought which
indefin- forms the more or less indefinable back-
able back
ground of ground of consciousness, the emotional fringe
thought governed of external sensations, and in fact the whole
byabstrac- .
tions. world of interests in which we move and
which alone makes life worth living.
Among all these abstract conceptions there
is one which, though based upon an illusion,
has nevertheless acquired such a dominance
in our reflections that it is impossible to
remove it. This is the common-sense view
that things which we observe have a dupli-
Outerand cate existence which we term outer and
inner. inner, the latter being our individual sensa
tions, and the former something which we
consider to exist independently of our indi-

RELIGION. 129
vidual experience, inasmuch as we know
through communication with others that
they have similar experiences, and that these
experiences have a form of existence which
gives them permanence and enables us to
return to them quite apart from recalling
them through memory. Thus, to give an
example, our visual impression of the moon
is commonly supposed to be something else
than the moon itself, for we know that our
fellow-men have a similar visual impression,
and we can not only recall this impression
through memory, but we can also at the
right time, and from the right position, re
gain the actual observation of the object.
This firm conviction upon which the whole
of our practical life rests — viz., that what
our senses reveal to us has in some way
an independent existence outside of them —
makes us search for such an independent
existence in connection with every mental
impression or experience to which we attach
importance.

130 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
Thus for feelings, desires, volitions, and
even for fancies, dreams, and imaginations,
we look for some underlying ground which
we incorrectly term their cause. Some of
these experiences, which belong to the emo
tional, indefinite, and half-illuminated back
ground of the field of consciousness, have
already in the common-sense and scientific
view received what we may term a physical,
i.e., an external representation.
This is notably the case with all those
feelings which we class together as bodily
Pains and pains and pleasures. They stand, as it were,
pleasures
inter- intermediate between those sensations which
mediate. ...
make up in their totality the outer world,
and those other sensations and experiences
which are entirely subjective.
Connected They are connected with our body or
with the . J
body. physical self, which forms a kind of link
between what we ordinarily consider to be
entirely outside or entirely inside.
Many of these sensations of pain and
pleasure have a certain local position. They

RELIGION. 131
are recognised by common -sense as well as
by science to have, if not an external ex
istence similar to that of our sensations of
sight and touch, yet something approaching
this, inasmuch as many of them can be con
nected with phenomena and changes in
definite parts of our body.
They, especially the painful ones, are
considered as valuable indications of bodily
disorder, and are very frequently the first
sign and suggestion of such.
This experience introduces a new con
ception into our reasoning — viz., the dis
tinction we make between order and dis
order, between what is normal and what is Normal
... and
abnormal ; and it leads to the generalisation abnormal.
that disorder and abnormality are sources
of, or identical with, pain, displeasure, or
discomfort. For the purely scientific view, this dis- Distinc
tion for
tinction does not really exist. science does not
In addition to this physical explanation exist.
or interpretation of feelings of pain or dis-

132 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
comfort, science has been able to infer
many purely physical or external agencies
which are, though unknown to us, the
ground or cause of inner states of feeling.
The pressure of the atmosphere which
surrounds us produces unconsciously feelings
which we do not primarily connect with it;
some persons are exceedingly sensitive to
the electrical disturbances in the atmos
phere ; the discovery of radium has revealed
to us an extremely powerful agency which
may have, without our distinct recognition
of it, an influence not only in the external
course of nature but also upon our own
selves, explaining as has been suggested the
medicinal effect of some " indifferent " thermal
springs. As the agencies which surround
us in the universe are only very imper
fectly known so far, as recent progress in
scienee has revealed to us many things and
processes formerly unknown, and as these
known or- unknown agencies exist and must
have an influence upon us, it is legitimate

RELIGION. 133
to suppose that many of our most secret
feelings, desires, cravings, or aversions may
have a physical counterpart ; further, that
the whole of the universe may have a col
lective effect upon our inner life and con
sciousness which we do not suspect and can
neither describe nor analyse. This would
show itself in the general tone of our whole
mental life, and be subject, in different
persons, to very different degrees of vivid
ness, something akin to the " feeling of the Feeling
of the All.
' All ' " which forms the object of such an
important reflection in Schleiermacher's
' Discourses,' or the " cosmic emotion," a term
frequently used by recent philosophical
writers. A similar idea is expressed by
Leibniz when he says that the Monad is a
" Mirror of the Universe."

134 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.

III.

Notderiv- This explanation of our inner life would
the be adequate if we considered the external
apparent , ., „ .
external world of space to be the all of existence,
the totality of things, containing within it
also the inner world as an epiphenomenon
or accompaniment of certain physical things
and events. As such the purely naturalistic
or materialistic view of the universe con
siders it.
For this view, the whole stream of thought
is connected with and dependent on certain
organic structures, such as the brain and
nervous system and their functions. The
difficulty, however, of finding any real loca
tion for this inner world, and of defining it
in those terms in which all other external
phenomena are defined, makes this view, to
say the least, unsatisfactory, and in its de
tailed elaboration quite fanciful.
It is not necessary to explain to the

RELIGION. 135
reader that according to the view adopted
in this Essay, the naturalistic view is quite Naturai-
. istic view
untenable, and in fact reverses completely reverses
, , . the order
the order of things. For us the inner of things.
world, the whole stream of thought, is the
earlier and larger reality which includes
what we term the outer world, not as a
counterpart but as an integral portion of
our total experiences — a portion consisting
of defined and detached data, which we
bring together into a new connection quite
different from that which they present to
our actual self-observation.
From this point of view it is quite impos
sible to refer either a portion or the whole
of our emotional life and experience to that
selected aggregate of definite perceptions
in space as their ground, or fuller reality.
Such a procedure would be analogous to
an attempt to explain interstellar phenomena
in the cosmic firmament by referring them
to the system of fixed stars and their
constellations.

136 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
If the quest for a fuller reality of our
emotional life, of our desires, hopes, and
endeavours is legitimate, as it is indeed
irrepressible, this fuller reality or ground
must be found in a different, a much larger
and deeper conception than even the
totality of the physical universe can supply
to us.
To this we must add a further reflection
which has occupied us already in the fore
going pages, and this is the fact that even
the purely physical analysis and descrip
tion of external phenomena seems to leave
out something which our immediate per
ception of them very clearly reveals to us.
"To- The "Together" of things which reveals
gether" , in
even of itself to the Synoptic view is something
GXt"6T*Tlfl.l
things quite different from the result of a careful
synthesis, dissection and analysis of the component
parts, and from the subsequent attempt to
bring them together again by synthesis.
Not only is it impossible, by ever so
careful and lengthy a process, to find all

RELIGION. 137
the component parts of any structure, be
this physical or mental, but the actual form
of combination of these parts can never be
restored. The processes of ordinary practice, as well
as the more refined operations of Science,
do indeed succeed in laying bare some of
the component parts or elements of our
various experiences, be they what- we term
things or mental states ; and they also
succeed in erecting certain structures out of
these resultant parts or elements.
But these products of intellectual and Synthetic
products
practical ingenuity are quite different from and
natural
the complexes which they analyse and complexes.
endeavour to explain.
For the purposes of this life, these new
structures are indeed quite indispensable.
Two among them are of primary im
portance : namely, first and foremost, the
logical order into which we cast the dis
orderly or chaotic content of our daily
experience ; and secondly, the growing world

138 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
of mechanical and artificial things with
which we surround ourselves, and the pro
duction of which is, to a very large extent,
carried out by means of applied logic, not
ably by those ingenious and complicated
methods which constitute the sciences of
pure and applied mathematics.
The desire has always been felt to do
something, more than dissect and combine
again, and out of this desire there has
grown an entirely different mental opera
tion, the object of which is to bring out
that unity which many natural things im-
Meaning press us with, and which we commonly call
of natural . . .
things. their meaning, their deeper sense, their
purpose, or their idea. What we in many
instances dimly perceive but cannot express
by definite signs or words, we nevertheless
long to have pictured to us ; this gives us
what we consider a truer explanation or
interpretation of things natural and real
than the dissecting processes of daily
practice or Science can give us.

RELIGION. 139
It is the merit and glory of Art to afford Art goes
• n . deeper
this deeper explanation : it does so by than
lip. . Science.
creating a world of its own, — a world indeed
which is merely apparent if compared with
the realities of common life, but which in
some mysterious manner brings us, as it
were, nearer to the real essence of things,
to the kernel of reality. From this point
of view, the seeming chaos and disorder of
our fleeting experiences acquires a deeper
meaning. The disorder is permeated by an
indefinable spirit, and the whole, as well as
its parts, presents itself in a kind of Divine
confusion.

IV
We have thus a fourfold order of ex
perience to take note of.
The first is the primordial reality in which
everything must find a place ; we have
secondly what we term the external world,
the selected aggregate of definite and lively

140 RELIGION AND SCIENCE
impressions which are removed or abstracted
out of the totality of our mental firmament.
A further abstraction leads us to that order
of thought which is represented by logic,
by mathematical forms and symbols, and by
what we term "the laws of nature." And
we have, lastly, a new order of things con
stituting a world by itself, and this is either
artificial or artistic, characterised, the former
by its usefulness, the latter by its suggest-
iveness and beauty.
Whereas the artificial world which sur
rounds us and becomes daily more compli
cated, administers mainly to our practical
wants, giving employment to minds and
hands, the creations of Art withdraw our
attention out of the material sphere, and in
their highest and rarest productions aim at
restoring that unity which immediate ex
perience and observation suggest to us in
completely. In some systems of philosophy this function
of Art and Poetry is supposed to supply all

RELIGION. 141
we need, or at least all that we can attain,
in the way of not only analysing and ex
plaining the contents of our field of con
sciousness, but also of interpreting it.
On the whole this view, which has cropped Yet does
. r» rm 1 • • not sumce
up in the history of Thought at various times to restore
i • • r> i n the lost
and m various forms, has not been generally unity.
acceptable, for two reasons.
The satisfaction which we derive through
the world of Art is, except for those rare
minds which produce it, accessible only to a
comparatively small number of persons, and
among them so little agreement exists as
to artistic standard and excellence that it
cannot become a common possession ; or if
it has done so in rare instances, its success
has proved to be only short-lived.
The second reason is, that this satisfaction
is, for most of us who enjoy it, purely con
templative, capable of elevating our minds
for moments only out of the disturbing com
plex and confusion of practical needs or
philosophic doubt.

142 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
interpre- But the interpretation which we desire for
tation , ,
ought not the experiences of our inner life must not
to be de
tached be entirely detached from the everyday oc-
from daily
life. currences of our existence.
The course of these occurrences leads us
continually into situations where our conduct
seems undecided, where we are met by doubt
and uncertainty, where an effort and definite
resolution of our will are wanted. In such
cases, unless we are simply led by habit and
custom — i.e., by what others around us de
cide for us — we require to see before us some
ulterior reality which gives an end, aim, or
purpose for our decision ; in fact, we desire
to work for something more permanent than
the needs of the moment and to bring some
order into our whole life.
The meaning of our inner experiences
must be something which is not merely use
ful for practical ends, but which appeals to
our emotions and feelings, and brings them
into some kind of intelligible connection with
the realities which surround us, and among

RELIGION. 143
these essentially with the members of the
society in which we live and move ; and
more than all, it must be of such a nature
and contain such a rule for our conduct as
will result in an inner satisfaction, in the
feeling that we have done the right thing./
We desire to have moments of repose which
allow us to close a chapter of our life and
start again with renewed vigour and hope.
The complex of feelings, desires, and voli
tions which constitutes this region of our
inner life, this innermost sanctuary of our
Self, confronts us in moments of quiet re
flection as something possessing at least as
much reality as the whole or any part of
the external world. Moreover, it is inti- Must have
. . a social
mately connected with that order of things reference.
and persons which we call "Society," and
in] [which we have to find a definite location
and position.
One of the most important attributes of
external reality is the dependence which we
experience, the resistance and pressure we

144 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
feel as often as we come into contact with it.
Similarly, this less clearly defined yet quite
as vivid environment which we term our
inner life exerts on us a propelling or re
straining force prompting and guiding our
actions and resulting in pain, relief, or satis
faction. And as, so far as our physical body
is concerned, pain and discomfort indicate
disorder, so also mental pain, in the form of
unhappiness, sorrow, or remorse, indicates to
us a rupture or break in what in physical
life we call the normal or healthy state of
our existence.
Both call for alleviation and a return into
normal conditions, into what the physician
terms the healthy, the moralist the right,
condition. Both force upon us an obligation
to seek and restore this.
We have seen that the inner life, the
primordial reality, includes the outer world
in addition to a large field of less defined
thought or experience.

RELIGION. 145
The pressure which we feel in the inner ah-
i i • t v i-i embracing
world indicates a reality which embraces the reality
whole of our field of consciousness, and which, by the
it we could see it as clearly as we do restricted world,
portions of the outer world, would explain to
us and interpret the whole of reality. For
such an explanation and interpretation we
are longing with a desire which varies in
intensity in different minds and in the
changing situations of our earthly life.
Pushed into the background through the
material demands which absorb with most
persons the greater part if not all of their
attention, it acquires at single moments and
through special events unexpected power, and
rises in certain minds to such vividness and
impressiveness that it enables them to give
expression to it, — bursting as it were through
the limits and the narrowness of those means
of communication to which intercourse with
the material world has restricted us. This
frequently irresistible force points to a reality

146 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
behind our emotional life quite as great or
greater than that of external things. The
word most appropriately defining this reality
"Spirit." is in the English language " Spirit."

V.
To define more closely this influence and
reality which we term Spirit, and notably to
point out more clearly the relation in which
we stand to it, forms the principal task and
Religious constitutes the importance of what we term
view of
the world, the Spiritual or Religious view of the world.
Counter- This view forms a counterpart to the material
part of
scientific, and scientific definition and description of
things in time and space. The common-
sense view contains both these views in a
rudimentary form and mutually interwoven :
it is communicated to us in the earlier portion
of our life, and forms the basis for a clearer,
more comprehensive, and more satisfactory
theory of life wherever the desire for such

RELIGION. 147
exists. As the common-sense view of the
external world which we find ready-made is
the elaboration of many minds through long
ages, so also the common - sense view of
spiritual things which culminates in some
religious doctrine is the result of ages of Result of
a long
thought and experience of the leading minds, history.
But here a marked difference will at once
be pointed out by the thoughtful reader.
The picture of the external world of things
and events in time and space which any age
in civilised history has elaborated, presents
certain definite and fixed outlines or principles
of thought which are universally accepted,
and which only the ignorant or incapable
can reject. On the other side, what we term
the Spiritual or Religious view has, at least
in modern times, never attained to an ex- Apparent
contrast
pression which seemed universally acceptable. as regards
• n general
In one word, scientific thought claims for consent.
the greater part universal consent, whereas
religious thought is characterised by dissent.
Viewed more closely, this difference, which

148 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
at first sight seemed so striking, proves to be
only apparent.
If we not only study the body of scientific
knowledge which exists at the present day,
and which is laid down in the leading text
books of science, but go back and review
the thought of earlier ages, we find that
the amount of knowledge which has re
mained unchanged is extremely small, so
much so that for the learner in almost any
branch of science the text - books of the
previous generation have become practically
useless. One of the principal reasons of this change,
not only of scientific knowledge but also of
the principles of such knowledge, is to be
found in the fact that the problems of
Science do not remain the same, but change
with the progress of Knowledge itself. This
progress is only of real value if it extends
our knowledge of facts which can be verified
through observation.
On the other hand, the problems of life,

RELIGION. 149
the highest rules of conduct, remain funda
mentally always the same, and have the
tendency, even if temporarily disturbed,
always to revert to their beginnings, indicat
ing that there is some abiding and unchang
ing reality at the bottom of things which
makes itself felt again and again in the
same manner, producing similar emotions,
prompting similar desires, and showing itself
in similar motives, all of which are sur
rounded with similar hopes and fears. The
ultimate problem of life is in fact always Contrast
as regards-
the same, whereas the problems of science problems.
are continually changing. It is for this
reason that the more advanced and original
a scientific thinker or expert is, the less he
is inclined to study the history of his sub
ject. Very few works of even the foremost
scientific interest are studied for scientific
purposes, even a generation after they have
appeared. On the other side, the great
works of literature, of poetry and art, and
the religious Scriptures, are again and again

150 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
resorted to, and with a repeated study
appear to us as possessing greater excel
lence and commanding greater wonder.
The scientific genius of Archimedes, Aris
totle, and Galileo was probably quite as
great as that of the foremost scientific
thinkers of recent times, but who except
the historians studies their scientific work ?
And even they study it not for scientific
purposes, but only in the interest of the
development of Thought. On the other
hand, the works of Homer and of the Creek
tragedians, and the philosophical writings
of Plato and Aristotle, are read in every
civilised country and spread in numbers of
editions, and the Holy Scriptures enjoy the
greatest circulation of all.
Yet it cannot be denied that the way in
which scientific knowledge is presented to
the popular mind and to the beginner has
something more convincing, and is more
easily assimilated than ethical, poetical, and
religious discourses, and it is important to

science
carries
conviction.

RELIGION. 151
see clearly wherein this property consists why
which secures such general assent and
conviction. The main characteristic of all scientific
thought of the first order is its definiteness ;
it deals with things which can be detached
from their surroundings, considered by the
observer, and shown to the learner. This
process of definition, this method of exact
ness, is used by our instructors almost from
the very first day of our infant existence.
The child's attention is awakened by pre
senting to it definite small things which its
vision and touch can easily grasp ; and this
process is continued right through the whole
of our years of instruction and learning, and
is important in the most advanced branches
of every science. It is therefore quite Clearness
and exact-
COrrect to term those sciences which practise itude.
this method of detachment, abstraction, and
definition the exact sciences, and to consider
them as models of clear thought and know
ledge. It also agrees with this that the

152 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
science which pre - eminently is built upon
simple definitions of simple things — i.e., the
science of mathematics — is becoming in
creasingly useful for all other sciences, be
they abstract or concrete. Nor is it neces
sary that a definition of any natural thing
be exhaustive of its whole nature or property.
Such completeness is indeed unattainable.
What is required and indispensable for
success in scientific research, discovery, and
invention is, that we start with some clearly
defined picture of the subject we are dealing
with. Such clear definition is frequently
gained only by the use of the symbolic
language of Algebra and Geometry. Whether
any or ever so many definitions of a natural
thing, fact, or event are adequate, expressing
what we term the whole truth, is a con
sideration which most of those who learn,
pursue, or apply scientific knowledge rarely
ask. The important thing for them is to
see and know clearly the thing they are
dealing with.

RELIGION. 153
It is indeed necessary for those who lead
the advance in scientific knowledge to take
note of the incompleteness of every scientific
picture or formula. They must always
revert to the natural object, which reveals
its totality only to the synoptic view.
They will there ever and again find new
properties which have escaped observation
or evaded definition. This synoptic view
will reveal to them and inspire them with
new truths ; but it is only by subjecting
what they have found to some clear defini
tion that their discoveries become fruitful.
The history of science affords numberless
instances where new discoveries were de
layed, not through ignorance of important
relations or properties, but through the
absence of a clear definition of them.
What we term popularly the certainty of
scientific knowledge is not certainty as to
its contents, but certainty in its method of
statement. The substance of every science
is always changing, but the form in which

154 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
it is stated is, or should be, clear and
defined. Through this property scientific
Certainty knowledge is easily conveyed and assimilated.
of method ,
attained But this certainty of form, not of content, is
through •11 v
limitation, attained through limitation.
The spirit- On the other side, the aim of the
ual view
aims at Spiritual (Poetic and Religious) view is
totality. always directed towards the totality of our
experience, and aims at giving some inter
pretation of the whole of things and of our
momentary and individual relation to the
same. For this Spiritual view, the content
is the underlying certainty of truth which
we experience or feel directly, but vaguely
and indefinitely. Whereas the aim of
Scientific thought is to extend its limits
without sacrifice to the certainty of its
method, the aim of the Spiritual view is
Though to improve, to refine, and to vary its method
vague, it -
may be of expression without losing hold of the
certain in .
content, immediateness, vastness, and depth of its
underlying conviction.

RELIGION. 155

VI.

The youthful mind in possession of what
we term its full powers- of thinking, feeling,
and willing, meets, as we have seen, in every
advanced stage of culture, with two com
plexes or bodies of thought or knowledge :
the whole body of scientific thought, and
the whole body of religious thought. Both
originally sprang from what we term common-
sense, where they exist interwoven and in
rudimentary form. Confronted with these
two systems of thought it becomes the task
of the individual mind to assimilate them.
To facilitate this process of assimilation forms
the principal purpose of higher instruction
and education.
This common-sense view of the world and
life has been acquired by us, as it were,
unconsciously through the aid of and in
contact with other persons and things. The
small and contracted area of the child's con-

156 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
sciousness has to be enlarged, deepened, and
clarified ; yet every addition and enlargement
or clearer definition means only a develop
ment of that content which existed originally
in the infant's mind, though in a confused
and indistinct form. It is, however, quite
evident that without an influence from out
side of a personal nature, the infant mind
could not have entered into possession of that
clearer and more comprehensive view which
forms the inevitable material of all thinking,
feeling, and willing in later life. That the
sensations of sight and touch, and to a lesser
degree those of hearing, play a prominent
part in this early development, is not more
certain than that there is an indefinable influ
ence passing between the infant mind and
the minds of other persons who surround it.
And though this influence is exerted through
external signs, sensations, and impressions, it
is something more than all these taken singly.
It is again the synoptic view, the apprecia
tion of a totality which contains something

RELIGION. 157
more than its collected parts and incidents.
This is apt to be forgotten when in later
life and for special purposes we attach so
much importance to, and make so much use
of, the difficult processes of analysis and syn
thesis, of dissection, selection, and artificial
putting together. With these processes the
original impress of a personal existence which
preserves while it changes its totality and
unity has little in common ; but it is, as
stated above, the principal introduction of
the child's mind into the sphere of a fuller
reality. This combination of attention to small
things, incidents, and sensations, with an
unconscious reliance upon the hidden back
ground of a comprehensive impression or
feeling, is manifested in that principal in
strument for the development of thought Languageand
which we term language. Together with thought.
the visual or tactual significance of words,
signs, or symbols, we learn in addition the
meaning of their composition in sentences.

158 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
It is, however, important to remark that
nearly all the words used in language are
derived from definite things in space and
time, and that the ultimate explanation of
their significance nearly always leads us back
to things of the outer world which possess
definition. There are, indeed, a few words
which ' seem to refer directly to inner feel
ings, but they lack definition.
Many of them are formed merely by con
trast with well-defined and observable things
or properties which can be pointed out.- Such
words are, e.g., infinite, immeasurable, &c.
Difficulty It follows from this that to communicate
of express
ing the through language experiences which belong
innerworld by not to the external world but to the larger
words. region of the inner world, we have almost
always to borrow words and terms which
belong to the former, or to content ourselves
with negatives. If we borrow words which,
in their strict meaning, belong to the ex
ternal world, we use them in what is termed
a symbolic manner. This produces on the

RELIGION. 159
mind the impression of inadequacy, and
generates the ever unsatisfied longing for
greater clearness and definition. A large
part of the finest poetry written in ancient
and modern times is employed in trying
to some extent to satisfy this longing for
greater clearness by inventing new com
binations of words, new images, and new
forms of expression, which in some inde
finable way arouse in the mind of the
reader or listener feelings, reminiscences, and
imaginations which cannot be directly com
municated. And here comes in the not less
marvellous effect of sound in the form of
rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, and all the
musical properties of verse.
But it is not less important to note that
not only in dealing with this less defined
and larger region in our stream of thought,
but also in describing external things, the
object of language is to call forth in the
mind of the listener or reader definite ex
periences — i.e., to influence the momentary

160 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
stream of his thought. He has to assimilate
and realise in this manner the meaning con
tained in the speech which is addressed to
him. A superficial view might suggest that
in scientific works or lectures, the reader
gets a great deal of information about things
and events which he can never hope to see
or experience himself; yet a very small
amount of reflection will convince anyone that
only in so far as he is able to represent to
himself in his own mind the things spoken
of, can he in any sense profess to know
them. They must become data in his own
stream of thought and occupy a place in the
firmament of his consciousness. Nor is the
process of acquiring and assimilating know
ledge simply one of adding data to data like
stones in a building. In the latter case,
without a plan and the total representa
tion in his mind, the learner would be
simply like a labourer or bricksetter ; he
would in the end possess no more than
an irregular heap of stones and no com-

RELIGION. 161
prehensive view of the wholej no idea of
its significance.
The process of building up and accumu
lating fragments of knowledge must lead to,
and be completed by, a synoptic view of the Synoptic
whole ; the learner or beholder must grasp the whole.
the whole subject. It is to this end and
purpose that all higher instruction should
tend. This grasp of any important subject,
the entry into the spirit of it, is a mental
process difficult or impossible to analyse. It
is frequently the flash of the moment which
throws light upon the whole region of pain
fully acquired information and gives it life,
a stimulating and impelling force. Hun
dreds of well - informed persons lack the
finishing touch which gives life to their
knowledge, and much so - called education
seems quite incapable of imparting it.
But if even in the most exact and system- Essential
even in
atic scientific or practical knowledge this the exact-
„... . . .... ... estknow-
finishmg touch is essential, it is still more ieage.
so when we are confronted with subjects
L

162 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
which defy the analytic and synthetic pro
cesses of science, and where the reality disap
pears under the hand of the dissector. This
is eminently the case with that great region
of feelings, desires, and volitions, of im-
Butpre- pelling motives, and reflections on past
eminently to grasp events and actions, which constitutes our
moral and .
religious moral and religious life. Information on
life. these mental states, and interpretation of
their meaning and significance/" cannot be ac
quired by painfully elaborated detail or crit
ical dissection ; it must be imparted as a
whole. The imparter of such knowledge
must trust to his power of awakening in his
hearers or readers a whole world of senti
ment, of producing a state of mind which
can only be subjectively felt and experi
enced, but not objectively described.
Before such a comprehensive view and
interpretation of the innermost experiences
of our mind, we are placed in contem
plating, acquiring, and assimilating any
body of religious or moral doctrine, and it

RELIGION. 163
requires an earnest will and a sympathetic
attitude to arrive at a valuable and pro
fitable estimation of it. Neither the pro
cesses learnt in scientific research, nor those
of literary criticism, can here avail. Nor
can philosophy do more here than it
has been able to do for scientific research.
This has invented and discovered its own
methods, and so must the soul which is
desirous of moral and religious instruption
discover the avenues of thought which lead
to the goal. VII.
The main object of this essay might seem
thus to be attained ; as it cannot be my
intention to introduce my readers to any
special body of religious thought, any struc
ture of religious Belief; just as little as it
can be my object to explain any system
of scientific Knowledge, or even to support
philosophically any definite principles of

164 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
Science. I cannot spare my readers the
labour and pains which the acquisition of
scientific Knowledge entails, nor the still
greater effort and responsibility which the
entry into any system of religious faith
demands. Both require personal and indi
vidual willingness and exertion, aided by
(scientific or religious) teaching, guidance,
and example.
Having shown how the inner (spiritual and
emotional) world is not opposed to the outer
(sensuous and intellectual), but embraces it
as the larger field of thought, we might stop
and throw every thinking reader on to his
own resources.
And yet there seems one more task which
we cannot altogether decline.
We have seen that, with the exception of
the language of musical sound, which stands
quite apart, the emotional and spiritual side of
our primordial consciousness cannot elaborate
any language of its own, and that in order
to enter into the work of this life, it must

RELIGION. 165
borrow the words, terms, and abstract notions
which are given to us by common-sense and
further elaborated by science.
This process of borrowing introduces into Leading
. . . . notions of
spiritual thought certain leading notions spiritual
which are indispensable, but which carry
with them certain restrictions that make
them inadequate and unsatisfactory in deal
ing with the portion of reality from which
they were not originally derived.
It may be helpful to my readers if I deal
with a few of these abstract notions, as they
have created, especially in modern times,
certain difficulties, and are for many a
stumbling-block in the way of arriving at
settled religious beliefs. I will deal here
only with the following : —
1. The Personality of God.
2. The Immanence and Transcendence of
the Divine Being.
3. The question of Revelation and the
Miraculous.
To deal with these three questions fully

166 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
belongs to religious doctrine or Theology.
In the present connection, I wish only to
show what light can be thrown upon them
by the psychological theory developed in the
foregoing pages.

VIII.
Person- The idea of Personality comes to us, like
ality of
God. every other abstract notion, from the m-
The idea terior of our own thoughts and from nowhere
derived mi- •
fromintro- else. To object to this by saying that per-
spection. . ... .
sonality is an adjective which attaches to
certain external things that are possessed
of body and mind, is, according to the view
we have taken from the beginning, unten
able. For all we know through observation,
reflection, and intersubjective communication
with other persons forms in our own mind
merely a complex or aggregate of our sub
jective experience, occupying a certain place
or places in our stream of thought, this word

RELIGION. 167
being taken in the widest sense ; or, to use
the other simile, it forms a constellation on
the background of the firmament of our
own soul. Nor is such a complex or con
stellation possible or complete if derived
only from the external sensations and im
pressions gathered through the instrument
ality of our bodily senses. Not only have
we maintained that there exists from infancy
an intersubjective communication between
our mind and that of other persons, but
even in viewing and observing the physical
and bodily features of others, we uncon
sciously add to this content a something
which we gratuitously imagine to be con
tained within or behind this bodily frame
work and which we derive from our intro
spective knowledge of our inner self.
And yet it must be admitted that there
are two distinct ways in which we can
think about our own person, or about other
persons. We can either take the ordinary
common-sense aspect which roughly defines a

168 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
person as an external, individual, living and
animated object ; or we can think of a
person by analogy with our own self, as a
stream of thought, a changing firmament,
which, in the form of thought, embraces
everything that is known to and exists
for it.
The correct way is of course to join both
aspects in the image of one's own or any
other person, omitting however the common-
sense but gratuitous assumption that the
second image of personality which we pos
sess is spatially contained in the first. But
the common-sense view and the practical
purposes of this life have pushed the first,
i.e., the external view of personality, so
much into the foreground, have accustomed
us so much to consider everything that
exists as located somewhere in the all-em
bracing space which we term the universe,
that it requires some effort, and a sustained
practice of philosophical reasoning, to put
the second, i.e., the internal, view of per-

RELIGION. 169
sonality into the foreground of our contem
plation, as we have tried to do from the
beginning of this discussion. Nevertheless
this inner view which embraces everything
is that which comes to us first; it is nearer
to us, and out of it we have to be roused
during infancy, childhood, and adolescence,
by all the resources of instruction and edu
cation, by the schooling of many years and
the gradual awakening and strengthening of
our own mental efforts.
All this happens unconsciously to our
selves, and the changes which take place in
the flowing and frequently recurring streams
of our thought do not as a rule form the
object of our contemplation till later in life.
In fact, the Psychologist, be he a scientific
inquirer, a writer of fiction, or a poet, pene
trates into the region of our inner life as
an adult, from outside, as if this inner life
were a subject for external inquiry like
that of any other natural object. He tries
to enter as it were into another dwelling,

170 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
using his own inner experiences and his
early reminiscences merely as guides for his
search and observation.
But this is not the way in which every
one of us has attained a wider or narrower
sphere of knowledge. Neither the child nor
the adult mind has any real knowledge of
outer things before it experiences all in
ternally : nor is ever so complete a know
ledge of our own bodily self or physical
environment of the slightest use for the
comprehension and knowledge of our true
self. If we once accustom ourselves to look at
everything, as certainly we did in the first
period of our earthly existence, merely as
internal happenings, as a changing but
frequently self-repeating panorama in which
every incident has equal reality ; if we
realise that only through a differentiation
and selection which takes place in this
changing kaleidoscopic view do we form
the notion of external existences distin-

RELIGION. 171
guished as objects from the background
as subject ; if we further reflect that those
objects do not attain to vividness, defini
tion, and completeness till they coalesce
into a personal existence outside of us, but
still within the stream of our thoughts, — if
we realise all this, we arrive at the con
viction that this internal possession is the
earlier and truer aspect of our own
personality. We then see that the earlier attribute of
personality is an all - embracing something,
and that the attribute of limitation attaches
only to that very small external group of
sensations which is united to the image of
our own bodily self.
The adjective of personality then signifies
completeness, in fact — the All. And in this But from
the stage
way we arrive at the notion of a much more before
limits are
comprehensive personality than we experi- imposed.
ence in ourselves.

172 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.

IX.

Our o>wn And yet we must recognise a further
self pre
sented important feature which mars the internal
ariiy. .view we may take of our own self. While
it is true that it contains, in the form of
thought or inner experience, the whole
Universe so far as it exists for us at all ;
not only the Universe of space which
common-sense and Science consider to be
the All, but, in addition to this, the back
ground and surrounding envelope of our
purely subjective feelings, desires, and voli
tions, we nevertheless experience painfully
that this internal All is never in the field
of consciousness in its totality, but always
only as a fragment. For it exists, as it
were, on more than one plane, and we have
continually to leave abruptly our contem
plation of one variegated aspect and to
change it for another.
Stirred at one moment to intense observa-

RELIGION. 173
tion of an external landscape or spectacle
spread out before us by our senses, we soon
lose the absorbing impression through some
memory picture, some freak of the imagina
tion, or some sudden feeling which intrudes
itself. In fact, the flow of our thought
consists as much in momentary impressions,
difficult to fix and retain, as in the for
getting of these and falling back into a
chaotic state of seeming confusion. In truth,
we never are really and fully ourselves.
"Memory," as Lotze says, "loses much, but
most of all the record of our own individual
moods. Many trains of thought familiar
to our youth appear to our advanced years
as foreign events ; powerless to find a road
back to sentiments in which we once rev
elled, we hardly behold a faint afterglow,
indicating the power which they once pos
sessed over us ; aspirations which once
seemed to constitute the very essence and
kernel of our self, appear to us on the other
paths which life has led us as inexplicable

174 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
mistakes of which we have long since for
gotten the motive."
This feature of our inner experience which
is identical with our real self produces in
evitably a feeling of dissatisfaction which, in
Longing some instances, may become intense, a long-
for the
larger ing for the larger view, for a more compre-
view. .
hensive grasp and a greater tenacity of
interest and purpose. We observe also that
this essential feature of incompleteness varies
among our fellow-men ; and those who pos-
The larger sess larger sympathies, broader views, more
the mind
the greater absorbing interests and greater tenacity of
the per- . . . ,
sonaiity. purpose, rise in our judgment to the position
of greater personality.
If "we take into consideration these two
great facts — viz., that (according to our view)
it is only through personality that we gain
in the earliest period of our earthly exist
ence that entry into a world of Reality
which enables us to distinguish our self from
a not-self — not only in our external physical
features, but also in the recognition of other

RELIGION. 175
minds ; and further, that personality always
impresses us as the most powerful instance
of individual existence ; we then come to the
conclusion that that which is most real within
us must have its ground in an existence inference
• • ¦ fr°m
which is not only all - comprising but which limited person-
partakes in an eminent sense of that highest aiities to
¦1 i • i f complete
form of reality with which we are familiar person-
., . ality.
in our daily experience.
We also noted before that one of the prin
cipal attributes of existences other than our
own consists in the resistance or pressure
which they exert upon our own personal
thoughts and actions,- — mostly in the inde
finable power which other persons possess
over us. But the greatest check of all that
we experience as we increase in mental de- Feeling of
absolute
velopment is, as Schleiermacher put it, a depend
ence.
feeling of absolute dependence.
This, in reviewing our past life, thoughts,
and deeds, reveals to us painfully the short
comings in our conduct, generating the feel
ings of guilt and remorse.

176 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
The experience of this spiritual pressure
upon the whole of our being we trace to the
influence of a Higher Power, in the same
way as the small checks and pressures in
daily life appear to us as the workings of
smaller external existences.
The soul and mind of the Universe — the
Divine Spirit — is in this way inevitably
endowed in our estimation with the attri
bute of personality, a personality indeed in
which the limitations of our own nature dis
appear, and this in spite of our incapacity
to carry out logically this highest conception
of our intellect.
"And I smiled to think God's greatness
Flowed around our incompleteness,
Eound our restlessness His rest."
To this feature of incompleteness and transi-
toriness which our own personal existence
painfully exhibits, we must add another char
acteristic of personality, so far as we know
it. This refers to the apparent contradictions
inherent in it ; of these none is more striking

RELIGION. 177
and at the same time more essentially neces
sary than the duplex view of our own self. Duplex
view of
On this we have dilated in earlier passages self.
of this Essay.
Starting in the earlier moments of our
conscious life with nothing but a stream of
feelings, impressions, and desires as the- only
and all - comprising Reality of our limited
world or universe, we gradually and imper
ceptibly gain a more vivid aspect of our
own self as occupying merely a corner in
this gradually enlarging Reality.
As this view enriches us with a clearer
and, as it were, more tangible image of
our own self, it at the same time presents
us with the spectacle of a number of other
selves and other things, the aggregate of
which becomes increasingly the object of our
attention. In practice these two 'aspects are
continually intermingled and alternating, and
we involuntarily employ each of them to
complete and explain the other. It is
almost impossible to keep them separate, as,
M

178 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
indeed, the combined work of the highest
intellects has succeeded only after thousands
of years in clearing the ground for a fruitful
cultivation of the purely external aspect —
i.e., of the scientific view, with its defined
methods. Still rarer and more difficult has
been the opposite endeavour to throw off
ihe trammels of the purely external aspect
and ascend to that exalted introspective view
which is our first inheritance, and the mean
ing of which we seem to grasp as the last
and highest effort our thought is capable of.
On the one side, the clear daylight of a
sunny landscape ; on the other, the half- veiled
outlines of a Spiritual Vision. Both these
aspects may be termed Revelations, and they
are equally indispensable for the development
of a fuller life.
Now, if we are continually tempted, and
even forced, to use the attribute of person-
Essence of ality as the only satisfactory definition of
the Divine
Being con- the essence of the Divine Being, we cannot
ceived also
as dual, escape carrying into it that duality which

RELIGION. 179
characterises our own experience as persons.
We cannot drop either of the two aspects of
the finite person in thinking of the Infinite.
We cannot do without individuality, neither At once
individual
can we do without all-comprehensiveness. In and aii-
compre-
forming the conception of a finite person we hensive.
see it as one among others, and at the same
time as containing in its own consciousness a
view of the whole world, so far as the world
exists for it at all.
In fact, the conception of the two selves
contains the paradox that either of them lies
as much inside as outside of the other ; and
this paradox is solved only if we let our
thought wander from one to the other with
out trying to unite both aspects in one mo
ment of time.
In carrying over the idea of personality to
the Divine Being we do not get rid actually
of this paradox. It exists, and has been
perpetuated there in the familiar theological Transcendence
doctrine of the Transcendence and Imman- and im
manence
ence of God. Whilst we must conceive of of God.

180 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
the highest Being as an all - pervading and
all-comprising Spirit, we cannot sacrifice the
other aspect which reveals Him to us as
possessed in the highest degree of the moral
and emotional nature of which we have
become conscious only through intercourse
with our fellow - men, and of the highest
form in which we experience this, as the
object of reverence and love.

X.

There is another important feature in the
gradual development of that view of the
world, of life, and of ourselves, which the
matured mind possesses, and which forms
the meeting -ground of different minds, ex
hibiting sufficient likeness in different per
sons to enable them to understand each
other. We have seen that this mutual
understanding or exchange of thought and
knowledge shows very different degrees of

RELIGION. 181
completeness in different regions of the total
experience which constitutes our internal self,
the firmament of our soul.
Within this we have seen that an uncon
scious selection takes place in the earliest
period of our earthly existence, — a selection
which is arrived at mainly through the
influence of other persons. It results in Common-
sense view
what we term the common - sense view of of the
world.
the world.
It is an elaboration or interpretation of a How
arrived at.
definite portion of the manifold experiences
of our inner life. We may now ask the
question, How does such a transformation or
interpretation take place ? How does the
unity in the primordial flow of thought
come to be differentiated into subject and
object, into self and not- self? And still
more wonderful must it appear to us if we
recognise that this transformation within
the field of our consciousness is not limited
merely to external and well-defined sensa
tions which are gathered up into the view

182 RELIGION AND SCIENCE-
of an external world, full of persons and
things, but that it also produces, to a
smaller or larger extent, the unconscious
assurance that the indefinable region of
feelings, desires, and volitions is likewise a
possession which we have in common with
others. We can ask how all this wonder
ful transformation comes about. The pro
cess seems to be so natural, it is so much
a matter of everyday occurrence, that its
intricacy and the complicated nature of the
innumerable stages in its history are mostly
forgotten. Accustomed as we are to begin reflecting
on these matters only when we are already
in full possession of the result of this
wonderful development, we regard the same
as the indispensable sine qua non of our
reflections, in the same way as the methodical
study of their mother tongue only begins
among scholars after they are in full
possession of it.
It will be helpful to look at the whole and

RELIGION. 183
changing contents of our field of conscious
ness and distinguish roughly between the
separate experiences according to the clear
ness and definiteness which characterises
them, enabling us to deal with them or to
handle them methodically. For our present
purpose this classification need not be
complete. We have then, first, a definite object — i.e.,
sensations located in space. These, in addi
tion to mere location and extension, possess
different qualities known to us through our
senses. So far as the purely spatial pro
perties are concerned, we seem through
geometry and mathematics to have a com
plete understanding of them. This under
standing is less complete when we deal with
what we term the qualities of things; the
exact processes are only to a moderate
extent applicable.
We have, secondly, certain complexes pos
sessing quantitative and qualitative proper
ties combined in such a manner that they

184 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
acquire an independence and unity which
distinguishes them from surrounding things.
They possess, in addition to quantitative and
qualitative properties, an essence which seems
indefinable for us. These complexes we term
living things. If we look around, we find
that this indefinable property of life appears
in various degrees, as we ascend from lowest
forms to the higher, till we come to those
complexes which resemble our own bodies
and to which we attribute a hidden internal
reality by analogy with our own.
In order to go a step further in our
investigation of reality, we are obliged to
turn our gaze inside, and to deal by intro
spection with what we find there. And here
we meet, thirdly, with an entirely new
feature, popularly known as memory.
The different contents of this inner field
come and go abruptly, a property peculiar
to them and not to be found in things be
longing to the external world, which we
have learnt to regard under the rule of the

RELIGION. , 185
conservation and permanence of matter and
motion; these two attributes being defined
in a scientific manner.
And we can, fourthly, go still a step
further and try to understand not only the
rising and disappearing content of our field
of consciousness, but also its totality, the
underlying feeling of the whole on which
depends the unity of our thoughts, — what
we term, in an eminent sense, our own self.
¦Clear definitions seem impossible here ; only
resultant and abiding feelings seem to exist,
among which some appear to govern our
whole inner life. Among these, a feeling of
absolute dependence recurs again and again,
and in some minds with greater vividness
and compelling force than in others.
It is possible to look upon this feature
of our knowledge in different regions of the
whole field of our consciousness either as a
defect or as a gain. To make this clearer,
we may identify the factor which plays an
increasing part as we ascend in the scale as

186 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
that of personality. For the purpose of this
life, for gaining efficiency of thought and
independence of character and conduct, pro
gress consists in repressing the personal
element as much as possible. As this
feature of personality can only be reached
by a comprehensive glance at larger or
smaller totalities, it is not accessible to the
defining and dissecting processes of logical
and scientific thought. Though almost every
important step in the progress of science
itself emanated from an individual and
personal effort, the results of this effort are
laid down in such definite terms of symbols
and language, that their origin in an in
dividual mind is forgotten. They become
common property which can be acquired
Science and- used. Science, with all its wonderful
depersonalises, applications, consists thus in a process of
depersonalising.
The per- The personal factor is to the exact methods
sonal ele
ment to it of thought incomprehensible, — an intruder
mirac- .
uious. which must be eliminated. Science thus

RELIGION. 187
regards the personal element not only as
wonderful but as miraculous.
On the other hand, we only grasp the But we
only grasp
meaning and sense of smaller or larger any total
ity by
spheres of reality by recognising the per- returning
.to this.
sonal element ; and as it was through this that
we gained entrance into our physical and
mental life, so it is only through returning
to it and appreciating its importance in the
rising scale of existences that we can satisfy
our desire, not only to know and handle
things in detail, but to approach an under
standing of the whole. What appears to
the scientific mind as an intruding and
foreign feature — viz., the miraculous — will
therefore always be a characteristic feature
in the higher and deeper understanding of
the world and life which religion offers to
us. It may be of some importance to state Meaning of the
more clearly what is really meant by the miraculous.
miraculous. The miraculous is marked by at least one
of two features : it is either an occurrence

188 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
which defies our recognised means of under
standing, which does not come under the
categories of methodical thought ; or it may
mean an occurrence which has no parallel
in experience — an unique phenomenon. The
miraculous may partake of either or both of
these characteristic features.

XL

The conception of the Miraculous, be this
incomprehensible or exceptional or both,
forms the main characteristic of what we
Keveia- term Revelation.
tion. .
its wider It is important to note that, from our

meaning.

point of view, revelation has a wider sense
than that popularly connected with the term.
Accustomed as we are through education
and practice to place ourselves on the plane
of the external reality as a firm footing for
our reflections, we involuntarily look upon
the indefinable and incalculable personal

RELIGION. 189
element as an intruder, — a something that
cannot be measured with the measure we
apply to external things and phenomena.
Thus we look upon that element as a
stranger who spoils our calculations.
On the other hand, if we take up the
position of this Essay, if we realise that
before we gained a firm' foothold upon the
common-sense view of an external world, our
stream of thought contained external and
internal experiences intermingled, and that
this state of things accompanies us through
the whole of our life, we are forced to look
upon the moment at which, through the
personal influence of others, an external
reality flashed upon our minds, as a revela
tion quite as inexplicable as the spiritual
revelation of later years.
Now the most important result of the Revela
tion of self
earlier Revelation which opened our eyes in and selves
. in child-
childhood was, as we have seen, to make us i100(j.
distinguish between our own self and other
selves, and, in general, to make us find in

190 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
an external reality the counterpart or ground
of our sensuous experiences. This process
has not only equipped us with the necessary
instrument for practical purposes, but it has
also the higher importance of making us
look for a similar counterpart or ground of
that portion of our world of thought which
we term the Spiritual.
The result of this search is, as we have
said before, the religious or spiritual view
of the world and life. Its central conception
is an interpretation of our ever-recurring
feeling of dependence with its characteristic
sphere of emotions, the foremost of which
are fear, reverence, and love : they all spring
from our relations to other beings like our
selves. On a lower level and for the ordin-
ary uses of common life they are embodied
in the statutes and customs of the society
in which we live and move.
A higher interpretation sees in them the
workings of a highest Spiritual Power.
The effect of this spiritual revelation mani-

RELIGION. 191
fests itself mainly in our active life, as it
has also gradually grown up and found
expression through spiritual intercourse or
communion with our fellow -men. But as
we are unable to trace in our individual
history the successive stages of our intel
lectual awakening, of our entrance into the
full daylight of a physical world, so also
we are unable to. trace the slow growth Reveia-
ot the spiritual revelation which runs through ning
human history and has culminated for us in history.
the Christian view of the world. That here
the personal element plays the foremost part
must be evident to anyone who accepts the
view which we have tried to explain. And
with this personal element we cannot exclude
the mysterious or miraculous character of
the entire process.
But let us not look upon this mystery as
standing alone and without a parallel in the
development of our mental life. Is the pro
cess by which, from a purely personal state
of feeling, we gain through the influence of

192 RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
other persons the first clear view of this
world, less mysterious and more easily ex
plained than the historical stages through
which the Christian Revelation was prepared,
given to mankind and enabled to attain to
that ascendancy which it now holds in
western civilisation, and which in spite of
repeated virulent attacks it has always held
or regained? In both cases, in that of the
individual mind as well as in that of the
thoughts of humanity, a new light has
suddenly arisen : how, and whence, remains
an eternal wonder of which the simplest
account is given in that Book which for all
the great mysteries of life contains the
clearest answer. When the teachers of the
people pressed the man who had been blind
and had received his sight to tell them
how this was done, he answered, " One
thing I know, that whereas I was blind,
now I see."
PB1NTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 08867 6151