MODERN SCIENCE AND PANTHEISM 83 



founded on a precise knowledge of the history of 

 philosophical inquiry, can detect the exact reach, the 

 limits, and the real significance of this suggestion, 

 or expose the illegitimacy of following it without 

 reserve. The trait to which I am now referring in 

 the victhod of science is its rigorously observational 

 and experimental character ; indeed, its strictly em- 

 pirical or tentative character. The two command- 

 ing results, which now in turn play an organising 

 part in the subsidiary methods of all the sciences, 

 are (i) the principle of the Conservation of Energy, 

 and (2) the principle of Evolution, manifesting itself 

 in the concomitant phenomenon of " natural selec- 

 tion" — the "struggle for existence" between each 

 species or individual and its environment, and the 

 "survival of the fittest." In these two principles, 

 and also in the general method of science, there are 

 certain implications that seem to point strongly in 

 the pantheistic direction. These implications ac- 

 cordingly deserve, and must receive, our careful 

 attention. 



How, then, docs the experimental — or, more accu- 

 rately, the empirical — method of science suggest the 

 doctrine of pantheism .-* I answer : By limiting our 

 serious belief to the evidence of experience, and 

 chiefly to the evidence of the senses. The method of 

 science demands that nothing shall receive the high 

 credence accorded to science unless it is attested 



