OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 609 



again the scattered fragments into an orderly and com- 

 prehensive system or a reasoned creed. 



And yet we must recognise, as I stated above, that such 

 a creed, a monistic view of life, a connected and reasoned 

 body of fundamental convictions to serve as a foundation 

 of belief and a guide to conduct, is at the moment more 

 than ever demanded. 



Now wherever we meet with such a demand we may 

 say that this denotes, and springs from, a deep religious 

 interest : using the word " religion " in the wider sense 

 which it acquired in the Latin language before the 

 Christian era, and which would cover not only the 

 religion of Israel and Christ but also the reasoned and 

 systematic creeds of the more prominent philosophical 

 schools which existed at the dawn of the Christian era. 

 And thus we may say that at the present moment the 13. 



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supreme interest which leads men to philosophise is the the religious 



■"■ interest in 



same as that which governed philosophical thought at philosophy, 

 the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nine- 

 teenth century : it is the religious interest. But though 

 the same, it is yet on a totally different level that this 

 interest manifests itself after the lapse of more than a 

 hundred years. In order to fix this difference and bring 

 it clearly before the minds of my readers, I will define it 

 by saying that at the end of the eighteenth century in 

 Germany the philosophical problem suggested by the 

 religious interest was that of the relation of Faith and 

 Knowledge, whereas at the end of our period the prob- 

 lem had assumed a different aspect : we may define it 

 as the problem of Belief or Unbelief. 



This modern phase in which the religious interest 

 VOL. IV. 2 Q 



