12 Wilde, Resolutio7t of Elementary Substances. 



cosmogonies, the foundation upon which their religio- 

 ethical systems have been established. However much 

 some of these systems fall short of the requirements of 

 modern knowledge and of advancing civilization, they 

 have been of supreme value in the education of a world 

 wherein slavery and cannibalism are still flourishing 

 institutions. Such systems are, moreover, the evolutionary 

 steps towards the realization of that ideal state of society 

 in which, in the fundamentals of religion as well as of 

 science, all mankind will ultimately be of one heart and 

 of one mind. 



DEFINITIONS. 



I. Natural Science is the abstract knowledge of 

 the nature and properties of things as distinguished from 

 the knowledge of their uses which constitutes Art. 



II. Natural Religion is man's conscious recogni- 

 tion of purposive intelligence and adaptability in the 

 universe of things, similar to that exercised by himself, and 

 on which he is dependent for his continued existence 

 and well being, and with which he endeavours to live in 

 harmonious relations. The various acts which man per- 

 forms to express this recognition and sense of dependence 

 constitute the different forms of religious Worship. 



COROLLARIES. 



1. Natural science, as embodied in ancient and modern 

 cosmogonies, is the antecedent foundation of natural 

 religion and of all other religions. 



2. Natural religion and natural science are as neces- 

 sarily correlated as the dimensional properties of space 

 and of substance. 



3. Just as man's ideas of causation in the natural 

 sciences are in conformity or otherwise to the real nature 

 of things, so will his ideas of causation agree or disagree 

 correlatively in natural religion and in all religions. 



