J. MALCOLM BIRD 293 



If so, then we shall have to have a philosophy of bio- 

 logical life which gives the human animal something 

 to survive with, a universe which gives us a place to 

 survive into, and a covering of cosmic philosophy that 

 recognizes all this as an aspect of reality. If the neces- 

 sity arises it will be met, and in that event we shall be 

 able in obvious truth to say that science and religion 

 have come together. 



But failing this extreme, it remains true that science 

 and religion are coming together and that their meet- 

 ing ground to a large degree is that supplied by psy- 

 chical research. Such a rapprochement calls for a 

 contribution by both sides. Religion must contribute 

 by losing some of its extremes of doctrlnarianlsm. 

 Science's contribution must consist mainly in a reces- 

 sion from the hard-boiled materialistic shell into which 

 nineteenth-century science crept and in which it im- 

 prisoned itself. I know nothing which gives a stronger 

 impetus toward such recession than the phenomena of 

 psychical research, the non-spiritistic explanation for 

 these which I have outlined, and the degree to which 

 this falls in step with the trend of thought in other 

 fields of science. The relativistic philosophy arose in 

 the first instance as a pure mathematical exercise; the 

 break-down of hard-boiled materialism began in the 

 attempt to explain certain anomalous experiments in 

 physics and chemistry and biology. Psychical research 

 and Its phenomena however at the moment represent 

 the largest and most fruitful field for the exploitation 

 of the newer philosophies. Through the circumstance 

 that it has up to this moment gone its way largely 

 without official scientific recognition, psychical research 

 has as yet made hardly any of what a historian would 



