220 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



exists no comprehension anywhere? No wonder 

 that men take refuge in authoritative dogma! 



"So is it, too, with our own natures. No less 

 inscrutable is this complex consciousness which 

 has slowly evolved out of infantine vacuity 

 consciousness which, during the development of 

 every creature, makes its appearance out of what 

 seems unconscious matter; suggesting the thought 

 that consciousness in some rudimentary form is 

 omnipresent. Lastly come insoluble questions 

 concerning our own fate: the evidence seeming 

 so strong that the relations of mind and nerv- 

 ous structure are such that the cessation of the 

 one accompanies dissolution of the other, while, 

 simultaneously, comes the thought, so strange 

 and so difficult to realize, that with death there 

 lapses both the consciousness of existence and the 

 consciousness of having existed. 



"Thus religious creeds, which in one way or 

 other occupy the sphere that rational interpre- 

 tation seeks to occupy and fails, and fails the more 

 it seeks, I have come to regard with a sympathy 

 based on community of need: feeling that dis- 

 sent from them results from inability to accept 

 the solutions offered, joined with the wish that 

 solutions could be found" (Spencer, 1893). 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 

 Some people are disappointed because scien- 

 tific investigation gives no direct support to 



