364 Science Religion and Reality 



Be calmly glad, thine own true kindred seeing 



In fire and storm, in flowers with dew impearled ; 



Rejoice in thine imperishable being 



One with the essence of the boundless world. 



It might be better not to call this pantheistic creed Naturalism, 

 reserving the name for the belief that the whole system of nature 

 is calculable in terms of mathematics and mechanics. This is a 

 clearer and more exact theory than the other ; for pantheism is 

 generally a conglomerate of animism, poetical fancy, and mysticism; 

 it soon leaves the domain of exact science. True Naturalism is 

 determined to keep within this domain, and to reduce all phenomena 

 under a few simple, easily formulated laws. All must be measurable 

 and ponderable. 



With this object Naturalism selects as the normative sciences 

 mathematics, physics, chemistry, and mechanics. All the pheno- 

 mena of life and change, all the operations of the human mind, in 

 spite of their apparent freedom and independence, must be theoreti- 

 cally capable of being reduced to problems in physics and chemistry. 

 In its desire to find a quantitative calculus for everything alike. 

 Naturalism divests life, whether physical or spiritual, of all that 

 separates it from the inanimate and inorganic. So far from deifying 

 nature, like pantheism, it devitalises it. Pantheism is romanticist, 

 Naturalism is positivistic. Clear-sighted pantheists have expressed 

 a strong dislike to Naturalism. 



But though these two developments are antagonistic, the 

 popular mind easily and frequently confuses them. The same 

 persons who speak of men as mere machines, the cunningest of 

 nature's clocks, will try to bring down wi!! and instinct into the 

 lowest stages of existence. They do not realise how much they 

 are borrowing, quite illegitimately, from idealism, poetry, and 

 religion, and while they profess to build upon Naturalism an edify- 

 ing and attractive philosophy of life, they disguise from themselves 

 and others the bare and abject poverty of the scheme which alone 

 can be supported by their primary hypothesis. One might go 

 further and say that even materialism could not exist if there were 

 nothing real except matter and energy. 



The method of Naturalism is simplification. Its ideal is to 

 find one simple law under which everything may be brought and 

 explained. This law can only be purely quantitative, and since 

 qualitative differences are incommensurable, they must be neglected 



