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DR. SILVANUS P. THOMPSON, F.R.S., ON 



immense spiritual gain and an enlargement and deepening 1 : 

 of faith. 



Man is possessed of a religious faculty, of a something which 

 manifests itself to him in his conscience, something which 

 brings to him the elemental perceptions of mercy, justice, love ; 

 something which not only enables him to distinguish more o? 

 less clearly between right and wrong, but which influences him 

 towards a choice of conduct. Whether it be regarded as a 

 single faculty or as consisting of several, we must treat the fact 

 of its existence as beyond dispute. It brings to man a 

 consciousness of something which, though invisible, intangible,, 

 immaterial, is greater than himself ; something which he did not 

 make and of which he cannot rid himself ; a spiritual environ- 

 ment which, though in one aspect it seems to be independent off 

 him, in another seems to be within himself. It is in the recog- 

 nition of this elementary fact in human consciousness that 

 religious thought begins. The possession of this consciousness- 

 is not confined to any one race or tribe of men, nor to any one- 

 age. It is a common property of the human race, however 

 various the systems of religion which have grown up upon it- 

 Doubtless it is more highly developed in some individuals and 

 in some races than in others. But being thus shared 

 amongst the human family it becomes an objective fact, a 

 matter of evidence, not to be ignored or ruled out as a product 

 of imagination. But beside being thus shared by the race, it 

 is in a peculiar sense the property of the individual. Whatever 

 he may learn of the workings of the religious faculty in others,, 

 his knowledge of it at first hand, as it lives within himself, is to. 

 him a much more real and vital matter. Whatever may be the- 

 evidence from without, the conviction from within is, at least 

 in most cases, far more cogent. The instinct of religion is then* 

 innate, as natural as the instinct of hunger, or of self- 

 preservation, or of sex. The existence of this instinct 

 constitutes, a domain of human experience, concerning which 

 the facts may be collected and co-ordinated, and their laws- ( 

 discovered. To investigate facts and co-ordinate them, and to* 

 deduce conclusions is, however, the work of another faculty,, 

 that of reason. Hence in the discovery of religious truth both 

 faculties are essential. But because one faculty has the function 

 of perceiving, and the other of co-ordinating or testing that 

 which is perceived, there is no possibility of denying to each its- 

 work. In this connection we may recall an aphorism propounded 

 by Victor Hugo : "II y a aussi une philosophie qui nie* 

 rinfini. Ilya aussi une philosophie qui nie le soleil. Cettet: 



