The Relations Between Religion and Science | Page 3

Science: the Uniformity of Nature. Hume's
account of it. Kant's account of it. Insufficiency of both accounts.
Science traced back to observation of the Human Will. The
development of Science from this origin. The increasing generality of
the Postulate: which nevertheless can never attain to universality.

LECTURE I.
THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF SCIENTIFIC BELIEF.
'O Lord, how manifold are Thy works: in wisdom hast Thou made
them all; the earth is full of Thy riches.'--Psalm civ. 24.
Those who believe that the creation and government of the world are
the work of a Being Whom it is their duty to love with all their hearts,
Who loves them with a love beyond all other love, to Whom they look
for guidance now and unending happiness hereafter, have a double
motive for studying the forms and operations of Nature; because over
and above whatever they may gain of the purest and highest pleasure in
the study, and whatever men may gain of material comfort in a
thousand forms from the results of the study, they cannot but have
always present to their minds the thought, that all these things are
revelations of His character, and to know them is in a very real measure
to know Him. The believer in God, if he have the faculty and the

opportunity, cannot find a more proper employment of time and labour
and thought than the study of the ways in which God works and the
things which God has made. Among religious men we ought to expect
to find the most patient, the most truth-seeking, the most courageous of
men of science.
We know that it is not always so; and that on the contrary Science and
Religion seem very often to be the most determined foes to each other
that can be found. The scientific man often asserts that he cannot find
God in Science; and the religious man often asserts that he cannot find
Science in God. Each often believes himself to be in possession, if not
of the whole truth, at any rate of all the truth that it is most important to
possess. Science seems to despise religion; and religion to fear and
condemn Science. Religion, which certainly ought to put truth at the
highest, is charged with refusing to acknowledge truth that has been
proved. And Science, which certainly ought to insist on demonstrating
every assertion which it makes, is charged with giving the rein to the
imagination and treating the merest speculations as well-established
facts.
To propose to reconcile these opposites would be a task which hardly
any sane man would undertake. It would imply a claim to be able to
rise at once above both, and see the truth which included all that both
could teach. But it is a very useful undertaking, and not beyond the
reach of thoughtful inquiry by an ordinary man, to examine the
relations between the two, and thus to help not a few to find a way for
themselves out of the perplexity. And this inquiry may well begin by
asking what is the origin and nature of scientific belief on the one hand
and of religious belief on the other. In this Lecture I propose to deal
with the former.
It is not necessary to include in the Science of which I am to speak
either Mathematics or Metaphysics. In as far as I need touch on what
belongs to either, it will be only for the purpose of answering
objections or of excluding what is irrelevant. And the consequent
restriction of our consideration to the Science which concerns itself
with Nature greatly simplifies the task that I have undertaken. For it

will be at once admitted in the present day by all but a very few that the
source of all scientific knowledge of this kind is to be found in the
observations of the senses, including under that word both the bodily
senses which tell us all we know of things external, and that internal
sense by which we know all or nearly all that takes place within the
mind itself. And so also will it be admitted that the Supreme Postulate,
without which scientific knowledge is impossible, is the Uniformity of
Nature.
Science lays claim to no revelations. No voice of authority declares
what substances there are in the world, what are the properties of those
substances, what are the effects and operations of those properties. No
traditions handed down from past ages can do anything more than
transmit to us observations made in those times, which, so far as we
can trust them, we may add to the observations made in our own times.
The materials in short which Science has to handle are obtained by
experience.
But on the other hand Science can deal