being an amateur and not an independent originator in philosophy he
naturally looks for guidance to the experts and professionals whom
he finds already in the field. A very large number of you here
present, possibly a majority of you, are amateurs of just this sort.

Now what kinds of philosophy do you find actually offered to meet
your need? You find an empirical philosophy that is not religious
enough, and a religious philosophy that is not empirical enough for
your purpose. If you look to the quarter where facts are most
considered you find the whole tough-minded program in operation, and
the 'conflict between science and religion' in full blast. Either it
is that Rocky Mountain tough of a Haeckel with his materialistic
monism, his ether-god and his jest at your God as a 'gaseous
vertebrate'; or it is Spencer treating the world's history as a
redistribution of matter and motion solely, and bowing religion
politely out at the front door:--she may indeed continue to exist,
but she must never show her face inside the temple. For a hundred
and fifty years past the progress of science has seemed to mean the
enlargement of the material universe and the diminution of man's
importance. The result is what one may call the growth of
naturalistic or positivistic feeling. Man is no law-giver to nature,
he is an absorber. She it is who stands firm; he it is who must
accommodate himself. Let him record truth, inhuman tho it be, and
submit to it! The romantic spontaneity and courage are gone, the
vision is materialistic and depressing. Ideals appear as inert by-
products of physiology; what is higher is explained by what is lower
and treated forever as a case of 'nothing but'--nothing but
something else of a quite inferior sort. You get, in short, a
materialistic universe, in which only the tough-minded find
themselves congenially at home.