82 £SSAVS IN PHILOSOPHY 



enough, there are not wanting philosophers, and 

 schools of philosophy, who read pantheism in science, 

 as science appears to them. But the question is, 

 Is such a reading the authentic teaching of science 

 itself? Here we must not mistake the utterances 

 of Dicn of science for the voice of science as such. 

 For on this borderland of science and philosophy 

 it need not be surprising if men only familiar with 

 the method of investigation which science pursues, 

 and not greatly at home in the varied and complex 

 history of philosophical thought, should sometimes 

 incline to a hasty inference when the borderland is 

 reached, should overlook the fact that their science 

 and its method have necessary limits, and in philoso- 

 phy take the view which an illegitimate extension 

 of their method would indicate. So, disregarding 

 the opinions of certain cultivators of science, we 

 are here to ask the more pertinent question, What 

 is there — if indeed there be anything — in the 

 nature of science itself, as science is now known, 

 what is there in its results or in its method, that 

 points to a pantheistic interpretation of the world .'' 

 To this question it must in all candour be an- 

 swered, that both in the method of modern science, 

 and in the two most commanding principles that 

 have resulted from the method, there is that which 

 unquestionably suo^gcsts the pantheistic view. Noth- 

 ing less than the most cautious discrimination, 



