IT. A More Scientific Temper 481 
natural science is absent: we fall short of the unchallengeable 
unanimity of the Biologists on fundamentals. The experimental 
method with its sure repetitions cannot be applied to our subject- 
matter. But we have something like the observational method of 
palaeontology and geographical distribution; and in biology there 
are still men who think that the large examination of varieties by 
way of geography and the search of strata is as truly scientific, uses 
as genuinely the logical method of difference, and is as fruitful in 
sure conclusions as the quasi-chemical analysis of Mendelian labora- 
tory work, of which last I desire to express my humble admiration. 
Religion also has its observational work in the larger and possibly 
more arduous manner. 
But the scientific work in religion makes its way through diffi- 
culties and dangers. We are far from having found the formula of 
its combination with the historical elements of our apologetic. It is 
exposed, therefore, to a damaging fire not only from unspiritualist 
psychology and pathology but also from the side of scholastic dogma. 
It is hard to admit on equal terms a partner to the old undivided 
rule of books and learning. With Charles Lamb, we cry in some 
distress, “must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, by some 
awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by this familiar 
process of reading'?” and we are answered that the old process has an 
imperishable value, only we have not yet made clear its connection 
with other contributions. And all the work is young, liable to be 
drawn into unprofitable excursions, side-tracked by self-deceit and 
pretence; and it fatally attracts, like the older mysticism, the 
curiosity and the expository powers of those least in sympathy with 
it, ready writers who, with all the air of extended research, have been 
content with narrow grounds for induction. There is a danger, 
besides, which accompanies even the most genuine work of this 
science and must be provided against by all its serious students. 
I mean the danger of unbalanced introspection both for individuals 
and for societies; of a preoccupation comparable to our modern 
social preoccupation with bodily health; of reflexion upon mental 
states not accompanied by exercise and growth of the mental powers; 
the danger of contemplating will and neglecting work, of analysing 
conviction and not criticising evidence. 
Still, in spite of dangers and mistakes, the work remains full of 
hopeful indications, and, in the best examples’, it is truly scientific in 
its determination to know the very truth, to tell what we think, not 
1 Essays of Elia, ‘‘ New Year’s Eve,” p. 41 ; Ainger’s edition. London, 1899, 
2 Such an example is given in Baron F. von Hiigel’s recently finished book, the result 
of thirty years’ research: The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine 
of Genoa and her Friends. London, 1908. 
D. 31 
