332 Science Religion and Reality 



medieval Christian and Moslem in a common inheritance of 

 culture ; or again, to ignore the economic and political motives 

 of movements which, like the Crusades or the Reformation, v^^ere 

 superficially in the main religious. Still, it is true that in the past 

 religion w^as recognised as the chief principle alike of union and of 

 division among men, and religious sanctions of conduct w^ere every- 

 where acknowledged ; now, we are often as it were shy of referring 

 to these, and cannot consistently with politeness assume their 

 influence in the case of any unknown neighbour ; and to insist 

 upon differences due to creed alone is to be immediately suspected 

 of narrow-mindedness and bigotry. Despite a widespread re- 

 action in certain quarters — the natural sequel of the Great War — 

 against the nationalism which occasioned it, self-denial for a 

 patriotic end is not only generally approved but commonly expected, 

 and its absence readily censured ; while self-denial for a religious 

 end is regarded as purely optional, and in any extreme form is apt 

 to be looked upon as eccentric or even morbid. 



Those who have reflected upon the features of modern civilisa- 

 tion which I have just been endeavouring to describe, and who have 

 learned from Hegel to expect the philosophy of any epoch to repro- 

 duce the outlines of the experience which the human spirit has 

 lived through in the period now drawing to its close, will not be 

 surprised at the appearance in our day of a system of thought — that 

 of Signor Benedetto Croce — which denies to religion a place of its 

 own among the " real kinds " of spiritual activity, and sees in it no 

 more than an immature form of philosophy, destined ultimately to 

 disappear when all that has been hitherto symbolically or imagina- 

 tively adumbrated in religion shall have received an adequate 

 expression in the philosophical language appropriate to a more 

 advanced stage of culture. 



It is not because I underrate the importance of the issue thus 

 raised that I content myself here with the bare mention of it, but 

 because the plan of the present volume appears to imply a view 

 different from that of Croce, and also more in accord with my own 

 convictions ; a view which would allow to religion a permanent 

 sphere of its own in human life, wherein it cannot be replaced by 

 anything else, even by philosophy. Indeed, if we accept what 

 Hegel says in the context of the observation to which I have just 

 referred, we shall expect the appearance of Croce's account of 

 religion to herald the end of the period whose experience it reflects ; 



