n every case, while the agreements and
disagreements may be made clear by referring them to general principles
of religious development.

CHAPTER XI

SCIENTIFIC AND ETHICAL ELEMENTS IN RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS

+1154+. It is remarked above[2103] that the sphere of religion is wholly
distinct from that of science (including philosophy and art) and from
that of constructive ethics (the determination of rules of conduct),
while it is true that the three, being coexistent and original
departments of human nature, must influence one another, and must tend
to coalesce and be fused into a unitary conception of life. This process
goes on in different degrees in different times and places, sometimes
one department of thought getting the upper hand and sometimes another,
but we cannot suppose that it ever ceases entirely. The relation between
religion and its two companions may become clear from a brief survey of
the facts given by historical records, this term being used to include
all trustworthy sources of information.

THE SCIENTIFIC ELEMENT

+1155+. Man is bound by his constitution to inquire into the nature of
things, to seek for the facts of the world, including the human soul.
This search is made by both religion and science, but their procedures
are somewhat different. Religion demands only the fact of an ultimate
moral ground of the world; science observes all phenomena and endeavors
to connect and organize them by a thread of natural causation or
invariable sequence; religion looks behind phenomena to what it regards
as its source. This source is reached by some process of reasoning,
either by acceptance, on grounds held to be satisfactory, of a divine
revelation, or by inference from the facts of the world (as the presence
of design or of moral order); but, when it is reached, all other facts
of science are treated as irrelevant. If, then, science confines itself
to the observation of sequences, the relation between the two cannot be
one of permanent hostility, since their material is not the same. They
clash when an old nonreligious belief, adopted by religion, is
confronted by an antagonistic scientific discovery; the first result is
a protest, but the mind demands harmony, and religion always ends by
accepting a well-attested scientific conclusion,[2104] and bringing it
into harmony with its fundamental beliefs.

+1156+. Certain phases in the relations between religion and science may
be distinguished, bu