sion); the
assignment of value is not only permissible (as may be admitted by
those who believe, or for want of thought fancy they believe, that the
historic order of events is the only order which can really exist), it
is absolutely inevitable. It is the concomitant or rather an integral
part of every act of perception. Everything that we perceive is either
dismissed from attention because it is judged at the moment to have
{10} no value, or, if it has value, attention is concentrated upon it.

From this point of view, then, it should be clear that there is some
deficiency in such a science as the science of religion, which, by the
very conditions that determine its existence, is precluded from ever
raising the question of the value of any of the religions with which it
deals. Why does it voluntarily, deliberately, and of its own accord,
rigidly exclude the question whether religions have any value--whether
religion itself has any value? One answer there is to that question
which once would have been accepted as conclusive, viz. that the object
of science is truth. That answer delicately implies that whether
religion has any value is an enquiry to which no truthful answer can be
given. The object of science is truth; therefore science alone, with
all modesty be it said, can attain truth. Science will not ask the
question--or, when it is merciful, abstains from asking the
question--whether religion is true. So the reasonable and truthful man
must, on that point, necessarily be agnostic: whether religion is true,
he does not know.

This train of inferences follows--so far as it is permitted illogical
inferences to follow at all--from {11} the premise that the object of
science is truth. Or, rather, it follows from that premise as we
should now understand it, viz. that the object of historic science is
historic truth. That is the object of the science of religion--to be
true to the historic facts, to discover and to state them accurately.
On the principle of the division of labour, or on the principle of
taking one thing at a time, it is obviously wise that when we are
endeavouring to discover the historic sequence of events, we should
confine ourselves to that task and not suffer ourselves to be
distracted and diverted by other and totally different considerations.
The science of religion, therefore, is justified, in the opinion of all
who are entitled to express an opinion, in steadfastly declining to
consid