ertain departments on which it must not encroach.
In this way religion has been forced farther and farther back, until it
is left with what? Not with anything that can be known, or is known; it
is left supreme in the kingdom of nowhere, ruling over an empire of
nothing at all. And so long as religion strives for a more tangible
possession so long must there be a conflict between science and
religion. But--"as the limits of possible cognition are established, the
causes of possible conflict will diminish. And a permanent peace will be
reached when science becomes fully convinced that its explanations are
proximate and relative; while religion becomes fully convinced that the
mystery it contemplates is ultimate and absolute." So, when science has
monopolised the entire field of human knowledge, actual and possible,
and when religion is satisfied that it knows nothing, and never can know
anything of the object of its worship, that it can offer nothing in the
shape of counsel or advice, but that its function is to sit in owl-like
solemnity, contemplating nothing, meanwhile offering man an eternal
conundrum that he must everlastingly give up, then, and not till then,
there will be peace between science and religion. And this is called a
reconciliation. Mr. Spencer finds two combatants engaged in deadly
conflict, he murders one and offers the other the corpse, with the hope
that now they will live peacefully together. The scientist is asked to
be content with all there is. The religious man is asked to find comfort
in the reflection that science must eventually monopolise the entire
field of knowledge, but that, in return, religion will be left free to
work in an unknowable region, to occupy itself with an unknowable
object, and to eternally cry "all is mystery" in an amended philosophic
version of the Athanasian Creed.

As a piece of humour this is superb. So also is the following: "Science
has been obliged to abandon the attempt to include within the boundaries
of knowledge that which cannot be known, and so has yielded up to
religion that which of right belonged to it." Capital! Science gives up
to religion that which cannot be known, and as it does not know what it
is, that cannot be known, it surrenders to religion absolute vacuity as
the proper sphere for its operations. And even this is accompanied with
the proviso that if it happens to have made a mistake, the ceded
territory will be at once reclaimed. Science would ce