On the other hand, Religion in its purest form is equally incompetent to
affect Science. For, as we have already seen, Religion as such is not
concerned with the phenomenal sphere: her theory of ontology cannot have
any reference to the How of phenomenal causation. Hence it is evident
that, as in their purest or most ideal forms they move in different
mental planes, Science and Religion cannot exhibit interference.

Thus far the remarks which I have made apply equally to all forms of
Religion, as such, whether actual or possible, and in so far as the
Religion is _pure_. But it is notorious that until quite recently
Religion did exercise upon Science, not only an influence, but an
overpowering influence. Belief in divine agency being all but universal,
while the methods of scientific research had not as yet been distinctly
formulated, it was in previous generations the usual habit of mind to
refer any natural phenomenon, the physical causation of which had not
been ascertained, to the more or less immediate causal action of the
Deity. But we now see that this habit of mind arose from a failure to
distinguish between the essentially distinct characters of Science and
Religion as departments of thought, and therefore that it was only so
far as the Religion of former times was impure--or mixed with the
ingredients of thought which belong to Science--that the baleful
influence in question was exerted. The gradual, successive, and now all
but total abolition of final causes from the thoughts of scientific men,
to which allusion has already been made, is merely an expression of the
fact that scientific men as a body have come fully to recognize the
fundamental distinction between Science and Religion which I have
stated.

Or, to put the matter in another way, scientific men as a body--and,