THE RECONCILIATION. 101 



English school of philosophy, recognizes also a soul of truth 

 in the doctrine of the antagonistic German school — this con- 

 clusion which brings the results of speculation into harmony 

 with those of common sense; is also the conclusion which 

 reconciles Religion with Science. Common Sense asserts 

 the existence of a reality; Objective Science proves that 

 this reality cannot be what we think it; Subjective Science 

 shows why we cannot think of it as it is, and yet are com- 

 pelled to think of it as existing; and in this assertion of a 

 Reality utterly inscrutable in nature, Religion finds an asser- 

 tion essentially coinciding with her own. We are obliged to 

 regard every phenomenon as a manifestation of some Power 

 by which we are acted upon; though Omnipresence is un- 

 thinkable, yet, as experience discloses no bounds to the diffu- 

 sion of phenomena, we are unable to think of limits to the 

 presence of this Power; while the criticisms of Science 

 teach us that this Power is Incomprehensible. And this 

 consciousness of an Incomprehensible Power, called Omni- 

 present from inability to assign its limits, is just that con- 

 sciousness on which Religion dwells. 



To understand fully how real is the reconciliation thus 

 reached, it will be needful to look at the respective attitudes 

 that Religion and Science have all along maintained towards 

 this conclusion. We must observe how, all along, the im- 

 perfections of each have been undergoing correction by the 

 other; and how the final out-come of their mutual criti- 

 cisms, can be nothing else than an entire agreement on this 

 deepest and widest of all truths. 



§ 28. In Religion let us recognize the high merit that 

 from the beginning it has dimly discerned the ultimate ver- 

 ity, and has never ceased to insist upon it. In its earliest 

 and crudest forms it manifested, however vaguely and in- 

 consistently, an intuition forming the germ of this highest 

 belief in which all philosophies finally unite. The con- 

 sciousness of a mystery is traceable in the rudest fetishism. 



