第36章

The progress of intelligence has throughout been dual. Though it has notseemed so to those who made it, every step in advance has been a step towardsboth the natural and the supernatural. The better interpretation of eachphenomenon has been, on the one hand, the rejection of a cause that was relativelyconceivable in its nature but unknown in the order of its actions, and, onthe other hand, the adoption of a cause that was known in the order of itsactions but relatively inconceivable in its nature. The first advance involvedthe conception of agencies less assimilable to the familiar agencies of menand animals, and therefore less understood; while, at the same time, suchnewly-conceived agencies, in so far as they were distinguished by their uniformeffects, were better understood than those they replaced. All subsequentadvances display the same result; and thus the progress has been as muchtowards the establishment of a positively unknown as towards the establishmentof a positively known. Though as knowledge advances, unaccountable and seeminglysupernatural facts are brought into the category of facts that are accountableor natural; yet, at the same time, all accountable or natural facts are provedto be in their ultimate genesis unaccountable and supernatural. And so therearise two antithetical states of mind, answering to the opposite sides ofthat existence about which we think. While our consciousness of Nature underthe one aspect constitutes Science, our consciousness of it under the otheraspect constitutes Religion.

In other words, Religion and Science have been undergoing a slow differentiation,and their conflicts have been due to the imperfect separation of their spheresand functions. Religion has, from the first, struggled to unite more or lessscience with its nescience; Science has, from the first, kept hold of moreor less nescience as though it were a part of science. So long as the processof differentiation is incomplete, more or less of antagonism must continue.

Gradually as the limits of possible cognition are established, the causesof conflict will diminish. And a permanent peace will be reached when Sciencebecomes fully convinced that its explanations are proximate and relative,while Religion becomes fully convinced that the mystery it contemplates isultimate and absolute.

Religion and Science are therefore necessary correlatives. To carry furthera metaphor before used,they are the positive and negative poles of thought;of which neither can gain in intensity without increasing the intensity ofthe other. §31. Some do indeed allege that though the Ultimate Cause of thingscannot really be conceived by us as having specified attributes, it is yetincumbent upon us to assert those attributes. Though the forms of our consciousnessare such that the Absolute cannot in any manner or degree be brought withinthem, we are nevertheless told that we must represent the Absolute to ourselvesas having certain characters. As writes Mr. Mansel, in the work from whichI have already quoted largely -- "It is our duty, then, to think ofGod as personal; and it is our duty to believe that He is infinite."Now if there be any meaning in the foregoing arguments, duty requiresus neither to affirm nor deny personality. Our duty is to submit ourselvesto the established limits of our intelligence, and not perversely to rebelagainst them. Let those who can, believe that there is eternal war set betweenour intellectual faculties and our moral obligations. I, for one, admit nosuch radical vice in the constitution of things.

This which to most will seem an essentially irreligious position, is anessentially religious one -- nay is the religious one, to which, as alreadyshown, all others are but approximations. In the estimate it implies of theUltimate Cause, it does not fall short of the alternative position, but exceedsit. Those who espouse this alternative position, assume that the choice isbetween personality and something lower than personality; whereas the choiceis rather between personality and something that may be higher. Is it notpossible that there is a mode of being as much transcending Intelligenceand Will, as these transcend mechanical motion? Doubtless we are totallyunable to imagine any such higher mode of being. But this is not a reasonfor questioning its existence; it is rather the reverse. Have we not seenhow utterly unable our minds are to form even an approach to a conceptionof that which underlies all phenomena? Is it not proved that we fail becauseof the incompetency of the Conditioned to grasp the Unconditioned ? Doesit not follow that the Ultimate Cause cannot in any respect be conceivedbecause it is in every respect greater than can be conceived? And may wenot therefore rightly refrain from assigning to it any attributes whatever,on the ground that such attributes, derived as they must be from our ownnatures, are not elevations but degradations? Indeed it seems strange thatmen should Suppose the highest worship to lie in assimilating the objectof their worship to themselves. Not in asserting a transcendent difference,but in asserting a certain likeness, consists the element of their creedwhich they think essential. It is true that from the time when the rudestsavages imagined the causes of things to be persons like themselves but invisible,down to our own time, the degree of assumed likeness has been diminishing.