Spencer alludes to this with special reference to the conflict between
science and religion; and it is in this same connexion that I also
allude to it. For it seems to me, after many years of thought upon the
subject, that the 'reconciliation' admits of being carried much further
than it has been by him. For he effects this reconciliation only to the
extent of showing that religion arises from the recognition of
fundamental mystery--which it may be proved that science also recognizes
in all her fundamental ideas. This, however, is after all little more
than a platitude. That our ultimate scientific ideas (i.e. ultimate
grounds of experience) are inexplicable, is a proposition which is
self-evident since the dawn of human thought. My aim is to carry the
'reconciliation' into much more detail and yet without quitting the
grounds of pure reason. I intend to take science and religion in their
present highly developed states as such, and show that on a systematic
examination of the latter by the methods of the former, the 'conflict'
between the two may be not merely 'reconciled' as regards the highest
generalities of each, but entirely abolished in all matters of detail
which can be regarded as of any great importance.


In any methodical enquiry the first object should be to ascertain the
fundamental principles with which the enquiry is concerned. In actual
research, however, it is by no means always the case that the enquirer
knows, or is able at first to ascertain what those principles are. In
fact, it is often only at the end of a research, that they are
discovered to be the fundamental principles. Such has been my own
experience with regard to the subject of the present enquiry. Although
all my thinking life has been concerned, off and on, in contemplating
the problem of our religious instincts, the sundry attempts which have
been made by mankind for securing their gratification, and the important