42 THE UNFATHOMED UNIVERSE 



dispelling the darkness that oppresses the mind. Moreover, 

 the scientific mood, inherently sceptical, has been widely dif- 

 fused ; its activity has a growing fascination of its own ; it 

 easily comes to preoccupy the mind, and thus tends to 

 crowd out the aesthetic, the poetic, and the religious moods. 

 And yet we helieve that religious interpretation and scientific 

 analysis are equally natural and necessary expressions of the 

 developing human spirit. 



When we are thrilled with the wonder of the world, the 

 heights and depths of things, the beauty of it all, we approach 

 the door of natural religion. And when the Nature-feeling 

 is not superficial but informed with knowledge, with no gain 

 of the hard-won analysis unused, we may reach the threshold. 

 And when we feel that our scientific cosmology leaves Isis 

 still veiled, and when our attempts at philosophical inter- 

 pretation give us a reasoned conviction of a meaning behind 

 the process, we may perhaps enter in. That the entrance is 

 not easy is shown by the unhappy prevalence of a profane 

 world-outlook outside the ranks of disciplined thinkers and 

 investigators, on the one hand, and religious, poetical, and 

 artistic lovers of Nature on the other. The difficulty of the 

 entrance is partly due to race, for North Temperate peoples 

 with no Celtic strain never find religion easy, partly due 

 to preoccupation either with the good things or with the 

 thick shadows of this life, and partly due to a misunder- 

 standing of the results of science. It is the last hindrance 

 to religion that concerns us in this course of lectures. 



What must be worked towards is a philosophical co-ordina- 

 tion of the essential results of Biology and the other sciences 

 with the results of intellectual inquiry in other fields and 

 by other methods, allowing at the same time for those 

 glimpses of reality that feeling alone affords. In this task 



