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 JMC : Science and Faith / by Francis Aveling

SCIENCE AND FAITH

I.

ALTHOUGH it is a subject that has on several occasions been dealt with with great ability, I feel that little apology is due for introducing a lecture on Faith and Science into this second series of the Westminster Lectures. These lectures, as those who followed the first series delivered in March last know, deal with those burning questions in the order of thought that have to do with the rational foundations of any religious belief or faith. But for the purposes of lectures such as these, each treating of one definite topic, the lecturer naturally approaches his subject from one or another definite point of view, and is consequently obliged to leave out a great deal of context that must be read in by the hearer. Each subject suffers something from its necessary isolation, for in the scheme of Christian philosophy, of which each forms an integral part, one branch throws light upon another. The whole is closely woven into one consistent system of knowledge, and it is only after having carefully mastered all, that each point stands out in its proper relationships to the others and takes its lawful place as a factor in the coherent system. The lecturer selects, as is natural, those leading principles and main lines of treatment with which he thinks his audience as a whole may be most familiar: but, even so, it is like playing one act of a drama without the rest. Something more than this may often legitimately be desired, which the tyranny of time forbids his giving. And although a certain provision is made at the close of each address for questions to be put to the lecturer, it is sometimes felt that it would have been conducive to greater clearness and conviction were the question treated backwards as well as forwards -- back to the great first principles of thought, as well as forwards to the conclusions actually reached.

Clearly such a procedure would be as impossible as it might be intolerably wearisome, were it undertaken in every variety of modification by each of the Westminster Lecturers.

We all desire, certainly, to have the totality of our knowledge before our mental vision, clear, compact, evident, and related. That is not an unnatural desire in an age of exact science, when all the world is scientific. But there are grave and even insuperable difficulties in the way as far as a lecture is concerned. No lecturer could well afford to leave the most pressing part of his subject, to treat, for example, of the intricacies of the origin or nature of thought. And a lecture upon this one point alone, excellent and useful as it might be, would be found to be so dry and technical, and apparently of so aimless a nature, that it seems to be better to hope that the relatedness of the completed course may emerge of its own accord from the sets of lectures, once they are issued in published form.

Nevertheless, in the present, I shall endeavour to take the discussion back at least one step, and to put forward one or two considerations that may prove to be of some value as a contribution towards the solution of some of those difficulties that are from time to time advanced against faith in the name of science.

That (in a very large circle of public opinion, at any rate) science is supposed to be inimical to faith, I need not now stop to prove or argue. There has grown up such a persistently crude idea of what science is and of what its functions are, that there will be no difficulty in recognising it whenever we meet it, and disposing of it in its proper place.

Faith, on the other hand, though its meaning is not always very clearly grasped, is sufficiently understood for the present purpose as a belief in, or acceptance of, truth upon authority -- divine faith, of course, presupposing the authority of God.

Plan of the Lecture

I propose, in the present paper, to refer briefly to the nature and method of faith and to the nature and method of science. I shall then go on to show how it is that true science can never come into direct contact with true faith. And, lastly, I shall point out the logically disastrous effects of those pseudo-scientific doctrines that, if they were true, really would reduce every possibility of rational faith to an absurdity.

Nature and method of Faith

First, then, I have, in the briefest possible manner, to touch upon the nature and method of faith. It is defined by St Thomas Aquinas as "signifying a free and certain assent of the intellect to that which is believed."{1} Taken in this sense, faith is obviously a free psychological act accepting, and acting upon, a motive. Most of our ordinary information is based upon a faith of this kind which we have in our fellow-men. The great number of our ordinary actions in business or society is grounded upon such faith, whose motive is the credibility of human beings. Social life would be impossible without it. But in the case of that faith which we designate theological or religious, the motive is a far stronger one; for it is no less than the authority of an omniscient and infinite being revealing to us certain truths. Now these truths form our knowledge or information of the supernatural, and at the same time they form a basis or groundwork upon which we can build our moral and religious life. That is to say, that just as in human faith there is both information and motive for action, so in the divine there is both dogmatic and moral theology. Consequently, to leave the analogy and consider that faith alone whose motive is the authority of God revealing, if three truths be once admitted, there is no question possible as to the validity and worth of faith. In other words, faith is both natural and logically necessary, always presupposing the freedom of the will's choice, once (1) the existence of God, (2) the understanding of man, and (2) the historic fact of revelation are demonstrated. And as these three truths form subjects already treated, or to be treated, in these Westminster Lectures, it will not be necessary to enlarge upon them here, except to point out, as I shall have occasion to do later on, how no one of them is in any way impugned by the findings of exact science.

If these three, doctrines are true, cadit quaestio -- there is no possible mental obstacle to the acceptance of theological truth and the consequent act of faith. And, moreover, there will be a thoroughly reasonable justification for the application of the method of faith, which is to translate dogma into human life.

But it is just here that the representatives of a particular phase of science come to the fore. Here, at the very outworks of religious dogma and faith, the battle is to be fought. The two philosophical questions, and the one historical, all three at the very foundations of all theology, are attacked. And all three belong to the plane of natural and human knowledge. Our task, therefore, is not so much to ascertain the contents of revelation or faith, as to examine as to whether these outworks are impregnable. Nothing can assail the interior fortress of theology as long as these three natural outworks stand.

Nature and method of Science

Secondly, I have to define the nature and method of science. This is not a very easy thing to do; for the term science is used in several quite distinct ways. For example, the ordinary scholastic meaning of science is the knowledge of things through or by their causes. And as there are four conspiring causes -- the formal, the material, the efficient, and the final, -- recognised in this philosophy, all these must be properly considered before we can be said to have any knowledge of the reality which they constitute. But, taken in this sense, the meaning is obviously not that of science nowadays. Modern science claims to demonstrate its teaching by means of observations and experiments, which can be repeated and verified practically at will. It examines the phenomena which fall directly under the senses. Indeed, the singular popularity and cogency of science can be attributed to this more than to any other fact. It is concrete, and deals in a concrete manner with things that are more or less familiar to us all, without the labour of mental abstraction. It employs standards of measurement -- the rule, the balance, and the chronometer; and without standards of measurement of some kind, nothing can, properly speaking, enter into exact science at all. What would the science of heat be reduced to, for example, had we no thermometer; or the science of optics, without refracting prisms, lenses, and angular measures? But with standards of measurement and such appliances as fill the scientific laboratories of to-day, how far can science go in dealing with the ultimate truths and realities of nature?

Exact Science

There are two answers to this question. The first would have exact science consider facts, and do no more. Its business is not to undertake an explanation of reality, but to describe in an orderly manner the phenomena that it witnesses. Its results are typified in an algebra-like series of relationships. It does not penetrate to or profess to reach the essences of the things with which it is conversant. It merely takes note of them as concrete facts, registers and catalogues them, and provides a symbolic language in which they may be conveniently expressed.

Use of Mathematics

The more it is able to press mathematics into its service, the more exact a science it will be. I would here draw your attention for a moment to the fact that mathematics, though abstracting from most of the phenomenal aspects of material beings, does not abstract from all. It deals with quantity, and quantity is an "accident," a phenomenal aspect of matter. Consequently, an exact science that employs the mathematical method never really transcends the phenomena of matter at all. It is qualitative and quantitative; that is to say, its conclusions, like its data, have properly to do only with aspects of the material. Thus, to borrow an already familiar example from the science of chemistry, the chemist does not need to know, or even seek to know, the essence of the bodies with which he deals. For him and for his scientific purpose it is sufficient to take, let us say, the gases known as hydrogen and oxygen in their proper proportions and synthesise them. He knows his substances -- in this case the two gases -- in just the same common-sense way that you or I do, with, perhaps, a little greater exactness, by their peculiar characteristics; and he is perfectly contented to write, down in his chemical shorthand, 2H2+02 = 2H20. Every chemical reaction can be expressed by means of the symbolical characters which chemists employ; and chemistry, in order to justify its claim to be an exact science, need not go much further than this. Everything can be accounted for in the region of its facts; its experimental method can be repeated ad libitum; it is concrete and satisfactory, for it rejects all metaphysical and transcendental conceptions.

Chemical Theories

But, it may be asked, "Has not that very science a number of theories which are inferred from its experimental data; and does not that disprove what you have just said?" As this question brings us immediately to the second part of our answer as to the meaning of the word science, it may very well be answered at once. Chemical theories have nothing to do with ultimate reality. The chemist infers the existence of molecules and atoms and electrons, because of certain observations that he makes in his experiments. But he does not thereby transcend matter or explain it. His atoms have definite weight and definite qualities. They are only small chunks, if the expression may be permitted, of the elements. It does not matter whether thirty-two lbs. of oxygen are united with four of hydrogen or one molecule of oxygen, weighing thirty-two units, combined with two molecules of hydrogen, weighing four units. The nomenclature and theories are useful for the chemist. They offer absolutely no solution of the problem as to ultimate reality. If they did, they would not belong to an exact science: they would be transcendental.

Is Man content with this?

But it is just at this point that certain scientists step forward and offer their theories as to the nature of reality. "Man," they say, "is not content to know the answer to his question, What is this? He wishes also to know the Why and the How. It is not enough for him to be told that the relationships and mathematical arrangements of science ought to be sufficient for him. He wants to get at the reality behind them: and who would forbid his trying to answer his own questioning?" All this is very true. The human mind is not content with the relative groupings and arrangements and calculations of the exact sciences. Man desires a great deal more, and he has every right to seek for it. But -- and this is the point that is often overlooked -- he cannot find it in the sciences. When he tries to solve the problem of reality, he leaves the phenomenal aspect. He insensibly oversteps the boundaries of exact science and enters the field of metaphysics. He has left his balance and measuring-rod behind him, and finds himself in a new region of purely abstract thought, for which, in nine cases out of ten, his very scientific training and habit of mind have more or less unfitted him.

No observed fact of Science contradicts the Faith

Up to this point, until the trespass upon the ground of metaphysics is made, I defy any one to show that a single fact recorded by any one of the exact sciences, or a single purely scientific theory, contradicts in any way, or even urges the slightest difficulty against, any doctrine of revealed theology, or against any one of the doctrines that are presupposed as the rational foundations of the faith.{2}

But it would be idle and useless to deny that many of the speculations advanced in the name of this second metaphysical kind of science do conflict with the doctrinal truths of revelation. Not only do they do this: they do much more. They strike at the very root truths which the human reason advances as the logical and reasonable guarantee of a supernatural religion. That is to say, some of the transcendental conclusions, drawn by scientists and advanced in the name and under the cloak of science itself, are absolutely incompatible with natural theology; and consequently, if they are by any chance true, they shatter not only the natural reasonableness of the truths against which they are directed, but all other theological truths that rest upon these as well.

Now what is particularly noteworthy in this connection is the vastly different nature and method of this second so-called science from the first. It is a medley of science and metaphysics. It presupposes, it begins and it ends with, factors that can never be the objects of experimental research. Sometimes, as we shall see, those who advance it confess as much. But their admissions are generally forgotten in the popular notion that it is science -- science the plodding, the exact, the verified, and the eminently respectable -- that contradicts the faith. Now, of course, it is nothing of the kind. But as it is in no small measure, if not altogether due to this confusion of thought that the unsound speculations of certain scientists come to be looked upon as the legitimate results of exact science, it will be useful here again to state what true science claims, and what it can reasonably hope to accomplish.

It claims to take cognisance of the phenomena that are presented to the senses, or are demonstrably and intimately connected with these. We do not stop short and say that there are no colours that we cannot see, or sounds that we cannot hear. It claims to set these phenomena out in order, and to relate them; to supply a useful terminology, or scientific shorthand, in which they can be accurately written down. But its chief claim is that it proceeds in every case upon actual observation, that it reaches its results by means of accurate measurements, and that it records nothing, admits nothing into its totality, that cannot be verified. All its data come from the senses; all its results are phenomenal; and when it crosses over from phenomena to reality, from what is verifiable experimentally to what is not so verifiable, it ceases to be science and becomes philosophy.

Explanations of Science

As an instance of this truth, I have only to refer again to the atomic theory. Now this undoubtedly is a very convenient hypothesis for the chemist to work with; but no saner man would contend that the existence of atoms, as realities, was proved. And even were it proved to the hilt, for there is no reason why mechanically indivisible portions of an element should not exist, it would explain nothing as to the nature or causes of the elements. Silver differs from water. Why? The chemist would reply, because the molecules of the two substances are not the same. But that obviously begs the question. He would go on to explain that in the molecule of silver only silver atoms are to be found, whereas in the molecule of water, atoms of oxygen and hydrogen exist. That, of course, is highly disputable. It cannot be proved, nor is it evident, that atoms of oxygen and hydrogen exist actually in the molecule of water. Even a cursory examination of the phenomena of the three point conclusively to another explanation. But, granting the truth of this account of the matter, how would he proceed to give a reason why the atom of hydrogen itself, or of oxygen, differs from that of silver. He might infer, as some have inferred, that the atoms of all the elements are formed by a structural arrangement of electrons, or from the ether. But how was this done, and why was it done, and what is the real difference after all? Those questions the science never answers. It is exceedingly easy to point to a structureless ether, or a primeval nebula, or a vortex ring; but no one of these things gives the slightest clue as to the meaning and reality of the world in which we live; for, being scientific conceptions, they do not even transcend the phenomena of matter. Ether, nebula, and vortex ring are just as much material and phenomenal -- they need just the same explanation -- as an atom, a molecule, or a ton of iron.

What, then, is to be said of the progress of science? Have all its discoveries been useless, and time spent on scientific research wasted? Do Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, or Dalton's or Mendeleeff's theories, or the kinetic hypothesis, mean nothing at all? Anyone who would ask questions such as these betrays the very confusion of mind of which I have spoken. These hypotheses, theories, and experimentally observed facts mean a great deal. Science, in all its branches, undoubtedly has gained an enormous acquaintance with the facts of natural phenomena. Never has its progress been so marked as within the last few decades. Never have its achievements been more noteworthy. It has accomplished much, both theoretically and practically, as applied science, and doubtless will accomplish much more, continuing its triumphant march along its own lines of investigation. And the very method that it employs is its best safeguard against being made responsible for the metaphysical speculations and transcendental guesses, the intolerable burden of whose weight certain scientists seek to throw upon it. It must always remain sufficiently elastic to admit new phenomena. It must always be prepared to make allowance for fresh observations. Even at the cost of an entire recasting of its whole scheme and system, it must be ready to acknowledge whatever may come to it in the form of a verified observation. Thus it must always be provisional. It can never be absolutely final. And it is on account of this essentially positive, necessarily exact, fundamentally experimental, method of science that I am able to assert that there is no contradiction between it and faith. It is because the exact sciences are both positive and experimental, dealing with certain definite phenomenal aspects of reality and admitting nothing that is not verifiable, that I am able to show, as I shall now proceed to do, how, in those cases where science seems to contradict faith, science has proved a traitor to its own principles. Of course, it is impossible to investigate all the statements and arguments now. I shall take a certain number as examples sufficient to make good my assertion. The series of examples that I shall advance is drawn from the pages of certain writers, who have sometimes, I fear, laid themselves open to the charge of advancing pure fiction for science. And my sole point, now at any rate, is to show that their conclusions are not scientific; that, in drawing them, these writers have been playing fast and loose with the strict method of science. We must be ready to admit and respect all the good scientific work that such men have done; but we recognise also that they have no claim upon us, as scientists, when they advance their personal opinions as to the nature and meaning of reality.

Trespass of Scientists on Metaphysics

You will notice, I accuse none of these writers of the slightest insincerity in advancing their opinions. I give them, as I am sure we would all give them, every credit for the best intentions. There is no prima facie reason whatever to suppose them to be actuated by anything else than a pure love of truth. But it is strange that, as men of science, they should not perceive the enormous assumptions they make in passing from the concrete of their science to the transcendental. Some of them, of course, do notice and even acknowledge the transition. Still, they claim to speak with the weight and authority of science, after that transition is made. It is surprising that they should not perceive that, in taking such a step as that from pure science to metaphysics, they violate every law and canon of exact science, and leave all their personal scientific authority behind them. And it is, as a result, more than unfortunate for their readers and for the public at large to be under the impression that they are reading science while in reality they are reading nothing more nor less than philosophy, and often very bad philosophy at that.

Merz

The man of science is no more exempt than any other man from the desire of explaining reality; but, as a writer has recently so admirably expressed it: "No ideas lend themselves to such easy, but likewise to such shallow, generalisations, as those of science. Once let out of the hand which uses them, in the strict and cautious manner by which alone they lead to valuable results, they are apt to work mischief. It is well known how the fundamental notions of a mechanical science, let loose into literature by Fontanelle, by D'Alembert, by Condorcet, or absorbed by Voltaire and Diderot, were expanded into a system of materialistic philosophy" -- note the significant transition -- "in L'Homme Machine, the Système de la Nature, and other works, the extreme views of which the great scientific thinkers could hardly approve of. These hasty but brilliant generalisations, expressed frequently in the most perfect language, did no good to the truly scientific cause; they did not spread the genuine scientific spirit."{3}

This carefully expressed judgement of John Theodore Merz may well be extended to other scientists and cases of generalisation than those which he actually cites in the passage quoted. The careless and unauthorised transition from the accurately observed and exact facts of the sciences to speculative generalisation pure and simple, is the rock upon which the too ambitious scientist often comes to grief. It is not in the interests of science when made, and it certainly prejudices minds not well versed in some true system of philosophy.

Science limits Thought

Indeed, though it may appear a paradox to say so, the function of science is to limit knowledge rather than to increase it. The true man of science, just in so far as he leaves out of the range of his mental vision all that is not of a strictly scientific and observational character, must be an agnostic in matters of faith. Indeed he must, if he would be consistent, extend his scientific agnosticism to philosophical problems as well: for science cannot furnish, and does not profess to furnish, any information as to the ultimate realities that lie outside the sphere of actual fact and observation. Just as well might we attempt to solve the problems of the first book of Euclid by means of chemical or botanic data, as to try to solve those of metaphysics by means of mathematics or chemistry.

Tyndal

It will be remembered that Tyndal, in his well-known Belfast Address, asserted that we might prolong our gaze beyond the actual data of observation.{4} "By a necessity," he says, "engendered and justified by science, I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life." Certainly he may cross the boundary of the evidence. We may all do so if we wish to do so; and we may discern in matter just what we are pleased to discern there: Tyndal the promise and potency of all life, and Lord Kelvin a creative and directive purpose underlying the material world. It is the same to science.

Haeckel

But we have no right whatever, in thus crossing the boundaries, to assert dogmatically, as does the present high priest of monism, principles that are neither scientifically nor philosophically tenable. "The universe or the cosmos," writes this extraordinarily unscientific scientist, "is eternal, infinite, and illimitable. Its substance, with its two attributes (matter and energy) fills infinite space, and is in eternal motion. This motion runs on through infinite time as an unbroken development, with a periodic change from life to death, from evolution to devolution."{5}

The plain man may well ask how Professor Haeckel knows all this. It certainly is not science. The conceptions are transcendental enough, at all events. Eternity, infinity, and illimitability cannot be found in scientific data. It is precisely their contraries that are found there, and nothing else. But the whole value of Professor Haeckel's thesis in its every part depends upon the truth of this Law of Substance, as he calls it. If it, by any chance, is not a statement of the truth, his beautiful answer to the world-riddle is worthless. And so Haeckel, conscious of the fact that he dare not appeal to science in its favour, is very careful to own up beforehand to philosophising. He lays it down that the idea "that the sole object of science is 'the knowledge of facts, the objective investigation of isolated phenomena,' . . . is as dangerous an error as the converse exaggeration of the value of speculation."{6}

Appeals to Spinoza

And still further to enforce his statement with a show of authority, he appeals to a system of philosophic pantheism. "To the profound thought of Spinoza," he says, "our purified monism returns, after a lapse of two hundred years; for us, too, matter (space-filling substance) and energy (moving force) are but two inseparable attributes of the one underlying substance."{7} These quotations give us Haeckel's fundamental philosophy in a nutshell, and define his position as a thinker clearly.

Laing, Huxley, and Spencer

Far more true to the scientific spirit are the candid avowals of Laing or Huxley or Spencer. Mr Laing, in his Modern Science and Modern Thought,{8} tells us that "what space and matter really may be we do not know, and if we attempt to reason about the limits of the one and the origin of the other, if origin it had, we get into the misty realms of metaphysics."

Huxley, too, in his lecture "On the Physical Basis of Life,"{9} shows the truly agnostic nature of science to which I have already alluded. It is true that he ignores, and at the same time politely refers to Hume for proof of the "sophistry and illusion" of, metaphysics -- but that by the way, for the metaphysics most in vogue at the time were hardly such as would inspire overmuch confidence. He remarks as follows: "But if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of either matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity is something illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate conception of law, the materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas."

These words, of course, are a most sweeping denunciation of metaphysics taken as a whole. And they are the words of Huxley, the man of science, deliberately used to close the doors of metaphysical speculation. Yet we are reminded in a recent and able essay by Mr Tennant{10} that, "in spite of his whole habit of mind, he lapsed at odd moments to the side of idealism, and conceded the position to the idealist's view of ultimate reality."

Lewes' Assertion

Nor is this in the slightest degree surprising. No matter how much we insist upon the necessarily agnostic nature and method of exact science, we never can, as a matter of fact, rest contented with its teaching alone. We continue to desire knowledge as to reality. We have an invincible tendency towards metaphysics. Well may George Henry Lewes write: "To aspire to the knowledge of more than phenomena -- their resemblances, co-existences, and successions -- is to aspire to transcend the inexorable limits of human faculty."{11} That is simply absurd. It is gratuitously affirmed; and it can be as gratuitously denied. We have mathematical ideas that transcend "the resemblances, co-existences, and successions" of phenomena. And the evidence for philosophical truths, while perhaps more difficult to grasp, on account of their extraordinarily abstract nature, is in itself quite as cogent as that of the senses. Indeed, the value of sense-evidence in the order of thought depends altogether upon philosophical principles underlying and justifying it.

Clodd

Once again, Mr Edward Clodd, in The Story of Creation, admirably enlarges upon a text quoted from the First Principles of Herbert Spencer. " 'Positive knowledge,' " he quotes, " 'does not, and never can, fill the whole region of possible thought. At the uttermost reach of discovery there arises, and must ever arise, the question, What lies beyond?' " Mr Clodd then goes on to exemplify this thought; and you will notice that he never dissociates himself from the scientific method. He starts with matter and he ends with matter, though he finds questions arising which must be left unanswered by science, since they "lie beyond." "The Whence of the nebula," he continues, "and its potential life, is an abiding mystery that overawes and baffles us. . . . And if of the beginnings nothing can be known, so is it with the things themselves, which affect us by their colour, their weight, and movement. . . . Thought and emotion have their antecedents in molecular changes in the matter of the brain, and are as completely within the range of causation and as capable of mechanical explanation as material phenomena, but of them no material qualities, as weight and occupancy of space, can be predicated. Heat may be expressed in equivalent foot-pounds, light and sound and nervous transmission in measurable velocities, but these never. We cannot make the passage from chemistry to consciousness, or transform motions of nerve-tissue into love, reverence, and hate."{12}

Boundaries of Science

These words may be taken as a careful marking of the bounds of physical science, except in the one point where the assumption is made about the cause and possible mechanical explanation of thought. It is an assumption, because it is not experimentally observed; and, though it looks like avoiding transcendentalism, it is a supertranscendent assumption. It concludes that thought is capable of a mechanical explanation, and denies that the passage from nerve mechanics to mental states can be made.

Up to the present point, I have indulged somewhat largely in quotations in order to make the position fairly clear. From their tenor, I think it can be fairly claimed that two principles stand out with a marked degree of evidence:

Conclusion I.

(1) Science is necessarily agnostic in nature and method. It cannot rid itself of the encumbrance of that matter which is its object; and, though it may realise that something "lies beyond" its scope, it is quite incapable of making any excursion into that forbidden territory.

Conclusion II.

(2) Human nature, therefore, is not content with scientific conclusions. It has a natural desire of knowing the ultimate realities, and will not stop short at the experimental boundaries of science. It consequently appeals to philosophy for any possible solution of those problems which are most vital to its interest.


{1} Summa Theologica; 1a 2ae, lvi., 3 C.; 2a 2ae, i., 4 c.; 2a 2ae, iv., 1 c.; 2a 2ae, viii., 6 ad 2; 2a 2ae, clxxi., 5 c.

{2} "Science! How easily is its great mission misunderstood! How often scored by its opponents for claims which it does not make, how often by its own friends pushed forward to a ground where it must fail altogether, and disastrously! To honour science means to respect its limitations: science is not, and cannot be, and ought never to try to be, an expression of ultimate reality. When science seeks to be a philosophy, it not only oversteps its rights, but weakens at the same time its own position." -- Hugo Münsterburg, The Eternal Life, pp. 13, 14.

{3} John Theodore Merz: A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, vol. i., p. 143.

{4} Lectures and Essays, Watts & Co., p. 38.

{5} The Riddle of the Universe, Watts & Co., p. 5.

{6} The Riddle of the Universe, Watts & Co., p. 7.

{7} The Riddle of the Universe, Watts & Co., p.

{8} P. 7.

{9} Lectures and Essays, Watts & Co., p. 56.

{10} Cambridge Theological Essays, p. 89.

{11} Science and Speculation, Watts & Co., p. 11.

{12} The Story of Creation, Watts & Co., p. 11.

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