kind of assurance about values that we have about facts. The chief
complaint I have to make about the mental attitude of Mr. Russell and
some of his friends is that, in their zeal for the unification of
science, they seem inclined to assume that the larger problem of the
co-ordination of Science with Life does not exist, or, at any rate, need
not occupy our minds. This is what I should call mere atheistic
superstition. On this point they might, I believe, learn much which it
imports them to know from the works of some of the notable living
philosophers of Italy, in particular from Professor Varisco of Rome and
Professor Aliotta of Padua, whose labours have been specially directed
to the co-ordination in a consistent system of the principles of the
sciences of fact with those of the sciences of value. Though, after all,
those who have refused to learn the lesson from the noble philosophical
work of Professor James Ward, the illustrious champion of sober thought
in their own University of Cambridge, are perhaps unlikely to master it
in the schools of Rome or Padua.

You will readily see that I am suggesting in effect that if Philosophy
is ever to execute her supreme task, she will need to take into much
more serious account than it has been the fashion to do, not only the
work of the exact sciences but the teachings of the great masters of
life who have founded the religions of the world, and the theologies
which give reasoned expression to what in the great masters is immediate
intuition. For us this means more particularly that it is high time
philosophers ceased to treat the great Christian theologians as
credulous persons whose convictions need not be taken seriously and the
Gospel history as a fable to which the 'enlightened' can no longer pay
any respect. They must be prepared to reckon with the possibility that
the facts recorded in the Gospel happened and that Catholic theology is,
in substance, true. If we are to be philosophers in earnest we cannot