106 THE RECONCILIATION. 



intermediation of an ether; and, as we have already seen, 

 (§ 18,) the assumption of an ether does not in the least 

 help us. Thus it is with Science in general. Its 



progress in grouping particular relations of phenomena 

 under laws, and these special laws under laws more and 

 more general, is of necessity a progress to causes that are 

 more and more abstract. And causes more and more ab- 

 stract, are of necessity causes less and less conceivable; 

 since the formation of an abstract conception involves the 

 dropping of certain concrete elements of thought. Hence 

 the most abstract conception, to which Science is ever slowly 

 approaching, is one that merges into the inconceivable or 

 unthinkable, by the dropping of all concrete elements of 

 thought. And so is justified the assertion, that the beliefs 

 which Science has forced upon Religion, have been intrin- 

 sically more religious than those which they supplanted. 



Science however, like Religion, has but very incomplete- 

 ly fulfilled its office. As Religion has fallen short of its 

 function in so far as it has been irreligious; so has Science 

 fallen short of its function in so far as it has been unscien- 

 tific. Let us note the several parallelisms. In its ear- 

 lier stages, Science, while it began to teach the constant rela- 

 tions of phenomena, and so discredited the belief in separate 

 personalities as the causes of them, itself substituted the be- 

 lief in causal agencies which, if not personal, were yet con- 

 crete. When certain facts were said to show " Nature's 

 abhorrence of a vacuum," when the properties of gold were 

 explained as due to some entity called " aureity," and when 

 the phenomena of life were attributed to " a vital princi- 

 ple; " there was set up a mode of interpreting the facts, 

 which, while antagonistic to the religious mode, because 

 assigning other agencies, was also unscientific, because it 

 professed to know that about which nothing was known. 

 Having abandoned these metaphysical agencies — having 

 seen that they were not independent existences, but merely 

 special combinations of general causes, Science has more re- 



