296 Science Religion and Reality 



value is the religious supernatural. Therefore, if there is any one 

 mark of the sphere of religion, it is this valuation of everything 

 within it as sacred, 



8. The Existence of the Supernatural 



If, as has been maintained, everything sacred is within the 

 sphere of religion, and everything within the sphere of religion 

 sacred, and this valuation interacts with a peculiar type of feeling 

 to be described as the sense of the holy, we should seem to have dis- 

 covered a mark by which the sphere of religion could be defined 

 so as to include what belongs to it and exclude all else. 



On that view, if, as has been further maintained, moral rever- 

 ence is continuous with material awe and what we may call the 

 ideal with the material sacred, when we speak of the sacredness 

 of truth and beauty and goodness, we are, whether consciously 

 or not, putting them into the sphere of religion. And there 

 must be a sense in which this is right, because we cannot by any 

 building up of natural values arrive at anything of absolute worth, 

 and it is the sacredness of truth, in itself and for our own loyalty, 

 which distinguishes it from mere facts in an encyclopaedia, while 

 by the same mark beauty is distinguished from prettiness, and 

 goodness from merely useful behaviour. 



But, while the sacred to which they appeal and the reverence 

 they stir are from the world of religion, it is vital to any right 

 interest in them that each should be in a world of its own. We 

 have the study of their norms or standards in logic, aesthetics, and 

 ethics. Thus, on the one hand, even if their sacredness be in the 

 same sphere as religion, they carry on their business in independ- 

 ence of it ; and, on the other, religion is not a mere combination 

 of them, nor yet something merely alongside of them. In seeking 

 truth, we may not be influenced by religious considerations, but 

 must regard only the reality we would know. And beauty, too, 

 must just be beauty, and goodness goodness. If religion try to 

 control such judgements, it corrupts them and is itself corrupted. 

 Wherefore, while we cannot separate true thinking, feeling, and 

 acting from religion without losing the absolute worth by which 

 alone they can be valued, it becomes necessary to distinguish the 

 business of religion from the business of logic, aesthetics, and 

 ethics as sharply as we can. 



The distinction, however, depends neither upon the feeling of 



