230 Religion and Science 



but there cannot be any fundamental opposition. For 

 science and religion use incommensurable categories. 

 If the religious man has attained to the vision of God, 

 nothing that science can say will affect that reality, 

 save in increasing the wonder of it. For it is plain 

 that communion with the Divine, which lies at the 

 heart of religious experience, is beyond the scientific 

 universe of discourse. It is possible that the scientific 

 sceptic may regard the religious vision of the unseen 

 universe as an illusion, just as it is possible that the 

 philosophical sceptic may regard the naive view of 

 the seen universe as an illusion ; but there is no pos- 

 sible way in which science could disprove God. Thus, 

 writing as a student of science from the naturalistic 

 point of view, which excludes in description any 

 extra-natural power (force, entelechy, or elan), 

 Professor Lloyd Morgan maintains in his Emergent 

 Evolution (1923) that there is nothing in scientific 

 cosmography that precludes an acknowledgment of 

 God. The same applies to other transcendental con- 

 cepts to which we are led by experience which cannot 

 be called scientific. The only proviso is the avoid- 

 ance of self-contradiction. We cannot have idea-tight 

 compartments in our mind ; our synoptic or all-round 

 view, which includes not only science but what we 

 gain from feeling and doing, must be consistent. We 

 say, tritely enough, that it must be consistent, yet 

 the difficulty is that we must not try to look out of 

 two windows at once ! We must not mix our concepts. 

 If we are trying to give a scientific description of 

 man, we must not speak of him, in the same breath, 



