believe is the most abundant type in the English-speaking communities.
My impression is that with most of the minds I have been able to
examine with any thoroughness, the attempt to systematize one's private
and public conduct alike, and to reduce it to spacious general rules,
to attempt, if not to succeed, in making it coherent, consistent, and
uniformly directed, is an almost instinctive proceeding.

There is an objection I may anticipate at this point. If I am to leave
this statement unqualified, it would certainly be objected that such a
need is no more nor less than the need of religion, that a properly
formulated religion does supply a trustworthy guide at every fork and
labyrinth in life. By my allusion to the failure of old formulae and
methods to satisfy now, I am afraid many people will choose to
understand that I refer to what is often spoken of as the conflict of
religion and science, and that I intend to propound some contribution
to the conflict. I will at any rate anticipate that objection here, in
order to mark out my boundaries with greater precision.

Taken in its completeness, I submit that it is a greater claim than
almost any religion can justifiably make, to satisfy the need I have
stated. No religion prescribes rules that can be immediately applied to
every eventuality. Between the general rules laid down and the
particular instance there is always a wide gap, into which doubts and
alternatives enter and the private judgment has play. No doubt upon
certain defined issues of every-day life some religions are absolutely
explicit; the Mahomedan religion, for example, is very uncompromising
upon the use of wine, and the law of the Ten Commandments completely
prohibits the making of graven images, and almost all the great variety
of creeds professed among us English-speaking peoples prescribe certain
general definitions of what is righteous and what constitutes sin. But