22 ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE 



exist, he possesses as yet no knowledge. It is 

 just here at this fundamental point that 

 science and religion meet in the minds of 

 most men who have thought deeply enough 

 about the problem, and here, since farther 

 penetration is as yet impossible, it is open to 

 each thinker either to declare he must leave 

 the problem so, or to call in something in the 

 nature of an infinite intelligence which sur- 

 passes himself in that it possesses the power 

 of inducing these fundamental properties 

 and activities upon matter throughout all 

 space and time. 



The first position never has satisfied, and 

 as evolution advances will still less satisfy 

 the mind, the second position at all ages in 

 the world's history of which we possess any 

 record has led to the evolution of systems of 

 religion. Imagination is as fundamentally 

 important for a student of natural science 

 as for a poet or a devotee of a religious belief. 

 It is by the use of the imagination that science 

 is led on from discovery to discovery, but 

 the essential difference lies in this, that in the 

 legitimate domain of natural science the work 

 of the imagination must be proven by the test 

 of experiment, which alone gives the true 

 clue towards the reading of the romance of 

 science which lies there, written we know not 



