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6. It is evident, then, that this question of the several 
spheres of religion and science needs to be very carefully in- 
vestigated, and my purpose this evening is to offer a few sug- 
gestions towards the solution of this great problem. My 
deep conviction is that the rapid progress of physical science 
in modern times has given rise to popular notions as to the 
authority of scientific thought, and its right to control and 
dictate to the intellect, which are both altogether groundless 
and very misleading. And I am now referring not merely to 
some doubtful theories, but even to those conclusions which we 
all accept without questioning. In order, however, to discuss 
this, it will be necessary first of all to examine — and this I will 
do as concisely as is possible without being obscure — the 
several distinct modes of regarding the universe, that is, the 
several spheres of thought of which the human mind is capable, 
and of which the scientific method is but one. Fichte, who, 
at times, even while subverting the very basis of all religious 
belief, yet indicates with singular clearness the lines on which 
Christian thought should proceed, has, in a work known in this 
country by an English translation, The Way towards the Blessed 
Life , marked out a fivefold division of this subject, which, with 
such modifications as are required to make it Christian instead of 
Pantheistic, and are, indeed, necessary to its exactness and com- 
pleteness, seems to me a perfectly exhaustive analysis ; and 
without accepting his conclusions, or even following his argu- 
ments, I shall avail myself of the general outline of his analysis, 
as directing us to accurate distinctions of the several spheres of 
human thought which become, I think, almost self-evident 
when they are once defined. 
7. (I.) For instance, it will not be questioned that the first 
and lowest mode of regarding the universe, the view of the 
outer world to which we are all naturally more or less enslaved, 
is that of sense ; that in which those things which men appre- 
hend by their sight, their hearing, their feeling, and their other 
bodily senses, seem to them the only realities. The man who 
cannot rise above this sphere of thought is in the lowest sense, 
avdpwTroc \pvxiKog, a natural man, and is, without all doubt, 
living a life unworthy of the high powers and the great ends 
of humanity. Or, as Wordsworth says, — 
“ Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes, 
He is a slave, the meanest we can meet.” 
And you will remember when the poet would describe a man 
destitute of all generous feelings and honourable motives, his 
incapacity of regarding any other aspect of nature beyond that 
which the senses recognize is the index of his character : 
