PREFACE xv 



smoothing over of an unfaced scepticism, or at best a 

 pallid fungus that, lurking in the dark corners of the 

 mind, must shun the light of truth and warmth of action. 

 In contrast with it a genuine faith is an ingredient in 

 the growth of knowledge. It is ever realising itself in 

 the knowledge that it needs and seeks to help it on to 

 further conquests. It aims at its natural completion in 

 what we significantly call the making true or verification, 

 and in default of this must be suspected as mere make- 

 believe. And so the identity of method in Science and 

 Religion is far more fundamental than their difference. 

 Both rest on experience and aim at its interpretation : both 

 proceed by postulation ; and both require their anticipa 

 tions to be verified. The difference lies only in the mode 

 and extent of their verifications : the former must doubtless 

 differ according to the nature of the subject ; the latter 

 has gone much further in the case of Science, perhaps 

 merely because there has been so much less persistence 

 in attempts at the systematic verification of religious 

 postulates. 



Ill 



It is clear, therefore, that Pragmatism is able to 

 propound an extensive programme of problems to be 

 worked out by its methods. But even Pragmatism is not 

 the final term of philosophic innovation : there is yet a 

 greater and more sovereign principle now entering the 

 lists of which it can only claim to have been the fore 

 runner and vicegerent. This principle also has long been 

 working in the minds of men, dumb, unnamed and 

 unavowed. But the time seems ripe now formally to 

 name it, and to let it loose in order that it may receive 

 its baptism of fire. 



I propose, accordingly, to convert to the use of 

 philosophic terminology a word which has long been 



