282 Science Religion and Reality 



existence of a great spiritual, unseen reality, both without in the 

 universe and within in the soul, has never been so much as 

 questioned. 



To us practical people it may seem impossible that any sane 

 person should regard the visible world as more unreal than the 

 invisible, but the fact remains that there are such persons and that 

 their conduct proves this estimate to be no pretence. As practical 

 people we give a practical reason for our conviction. We go about 

 our business in the world sensibly, and that leaves us in no doubt 

 about the world's reality. Were we asked to explain why 

 the Indian is not equally convinced, we should say that, having 

 withdrawn from the wo. Id, he has deprived the world of the power 

 to witness to itself by its uses. That is to say, we take the reality 

 of the visible world along with the employment of its natural values, 

 and do not go on to ask for some reason outside of what it means 

 for us whereby to establish its reality. 



But while we accept in this way the natural world, it seems 

 reasonable to many to require a quite different kind of proof of the 

 supernatural. Instead of asking, what is the relation of this 

 environment to us and our relation to it, which is the essential 

 religious question, it is thought necessary to require evidence of it 

 quite apart from considering whether it does any business in life. 

 What is new never comes in, however, in any other way than by 

 making a difference to our environment, and we cannot discover it 

 by reasoning from something else. 



At the same time no environment comes in as mere crude 

 importation like our furniture, or, indeed, by any mere impact 

 or impulse. All environment deals with us and we deal with all 

 environment as meaning, and for that our thinking about it is of 

 the utmost importance. We know a reality not, as some seem to 

 suppose, when we do not think about it, but only when we think 

 about it rightly, which is when our meaning corresponds to its 

 meaning. Thus a vast amount of thinking and valuing, which is 

 a kind of science, is embedded even in our perceptions. And, in 

 the same way, a vast amount of thinking and valuing, which is a 

 kind of theology, interpenetrates our higher intuitions. For this 

 reason we can argue ourselves out of any experience and, without 

 right thinking, we cannot rightly receive the plainest facts. This 

 is sometimes obscured by the difference between our speculative 

 and our practical thinking. Just as we may be sceptics with regard 



