115 
himself that what he means by science is just the deductions 
of men from what they think they have seen in nature, he 
would not have represented mankind as perpetually tossed to 
and fro between science and religion. For it has yet to be 
proved that between the correct interpretation of the thoughts 
revealed in nature and the thoughts revealed in religion, there 
is any conflict. It is at least neither nature nor religion that 
is to blame for the battledore-and-shuttlecock play which the 
author sketches, and he, as a man of science, must bear his own 
share of the blame attached to such an unpleasant and un- 
profitable state of things. 
16. This claim to a monopoly of reason on the side of science 
is often based on a professed certainty in result which has not 
yet been made good. Even within the circle whose unfavourable 
utterances towards religion have been the strongest, there are 
divergences in matters of science which make one question 
whether any certainty is ever to be reached. Theories and 
systems displace and demolish one another, as it has been said, 
“ like dolls in a puppet-show.” Of course, reason will give us 
certainty in science, but we must make sure that it is reason, and 
not simply reasoning that we have found. The divine thought 
lodged in nature is one thing, but the reasonings of men about 
that thought may be another thing altogether. Many illustra- 
tions of false reasoning may be found in connection with both 
science and religion, and nothing could be more unreal than 
some things which are declared as certainties; but that fact 
cannot militate against either the one or the other. No aberra- 
tions of reasoning in religion could be more glaring than some 
of the freaks we meet in connection with science. When, in con- 
nection with mental science, John Stuart Mill tells us that there 
may be worlds in which two and two are not four, we feel that 
reason is outraged, and that on such a principle there could be 
no consistency of thought on any question. But it is not reason 
that makes that assertion, any more than reason gives the 
flagrant and false findings within the sphere of religion to which 
the sceptical mind objects. When, again, Mr. Mill declares 
that “ human volitions in particular may come into existence 
uncaused,” we get another of those wild things which anything 
ever said in connection with religion has never yet surpassed. 
But surely reason is not responsible for these things. Methods 
of reasoning may be defective, the logical process may land men 
in absurdity, but reason rejects the imputation of blame as if 
she were at fault. And hence science has nothing to present 
as a result more positive and sure than what reason gives us in 
religion. 
17. But this claim to a monopoly of reason on the side of 
