us life of the race in all lands and in all
ages. A science of religions is taking its place among the other
sciences. It is as purely an inductive science as is any other. The
history of religions and the philosophy of religion are being rewritten
from this point of view.

In the first lines of this chapter we spoke of the empirical sciences,
meaning the sciences of the material world. It is clear, however, that
the sciences of mind, of morals and of religion have now become
empirical sciences. They have their basis in experience, the experience
of individuals and the experience of masses of men, of ages of
observable human life. They all proceed by the method of observation and
inference, of hypothesis and verification. There is a unity of method as
between the natural and social and psychical sciences, the reach of
which is startling to reflect upon. Indeed, the physiological aspects of
psychology, the investigations of the relation of adolescence to
conversion, suggest that the distinction between the physical and the
psychical is a vanishing distinction. Science comes nearer to offering
an interpretation of the universe as a whole than the opening paragraphs
of this chapter would imply. But it does so by including religion, not
by excluding it. No one would any longer think of citing Kant's
distinction of two reasons and two worlds in the sense of establishing a
city of refuge into which the persecuted might flee. Kant rendered
incomparable service by making clear two poles of thought. Yet we must
realise how the space between is filled with the gradations of an
absolute continuity of activity. Man has but one reason. This may
conceivably operate upon appropriate material in one or the other of
these polar fashions. It does operate in infinite variations of degree,
in unity with itself, after both fashions, at all times and upon all
materials.

Positivism was a system. Agnosticism was at least a phase of thought.
The broadening of the conception of science and the invasion of every
area of life by a science thus broadly conceived, has been an influence
less tangible than those others but not, therefore, less effective.
Positivism was bitterly hostile to Christianity, though, in the mind of
Comte himself and of a few others, it produced a curious substitute,
possessing many of the marks of Roman Catholicism. The name 'agnostic'
was so loosely used that one must say that the contention was hostile to
religion in th