4 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



both science and philosophy as a branch of that much 

 more fundamental and much more necessary mode 

 of thought religion. Philosophy indeed is but the 

 attempt on one side to disentangle and analyse the 

 various elements which are involved in the concepts 

 of religion. It represents an endeavour to submit the 

 inherited traditions of a whole complex social group 

 concerning the " nature of things," the ultimate 

 verities, to the reasoning power of one individual 

 member of the society, who, viewing life from his own 

 personal standpoint, strives to find arguments in 

 support of the current conclusions. The work of 

 science in the field of human reason is to examine the 

 arguments, test the evidence adduced in their support, 

 pronounce on their validity, and to suggest new 

 methods of attack. Therefore it fell out in the logical 

 course of development that the earliest astronomers 

 were probably Chaldean priests ; while the ancient 

 Egyptians referred the origin of all knowledge to the 

 gods, who had revealed it to those in their service. 

 The Babylonian legend of the creation, attached by 

 the Hebrews to the Arabian Jehovah of Sinai, supplied 

 a cosmogony, not only to the Jews, but also to the 

 Christian races of Europe till quite recent years. To 

 the early Greeks, the sun was the flaming chariot of 

 Phoebus ; to the Indians, the clouds were kindly cows 

 from which milk descends as nourishing rain on the 

 fruitful earth. 



It is possible that, at an earlier stage, religion itself 

 arose from the magic rites by which primitive men 

 try to control, by imitating, the processes of nature, 

 or to signalize the ceremonies of tribal initiation. 

 Magic would then be a lineal ancestor of modern 



