Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2011
Not the least significant fact of this great scientific age is its deep interest in religion. On the one hand, in spite of serious protests from the conservatives, science has established its right to apply the same method to the study of religion which has been of such great service in reducing the facts of other fields from chaos to order; and thus we have Comparative Religion, Higher Criticism, and the Psychology of Religion. On the other hand, attempts have been made from the philosophical side to furnish the same rationale for the ultimate religious concepts as for the scientific. The import of this has been, not to show that both sorts of ideas are ultimately equally invalid, equally lose themselves in the unknowable, as in the dark all cows are gray; but to show the legitimacy and importance of both in steering us in the direction of the real. What I am concerned with in this paper is to inquire into the validity of our religious ideals; but to do this I shall have to inquire first how any ideals become valid. If this seems a roundabout way, I still feel that it is the shortest way to reach the end in view.
1 First Principles, Chapter iv, The Relativity of Knowledge.