MALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK KORONIS~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~},
(Aristot. "De Divin. in Somn.," c. ii.). It is part of the very essence of
religion, as we have seen, to read in the pages of nature, insufficiency,
illusion, and perplexities, and to be made thereby impatient and desirous
of penetrating to the true nature of things. Religion does not claim to be
directly deducible out of a consideration of nature; it demands only the
right and freedom to interpret the world in its own way. And for this it
is sufficient that this world affords those hints and suggestions for its
convictions that we have seen it does afford. To form clear ideas in
regard to the actual relations of the infinite to the finite, and of God
to the world, and of what religion calls creation, preservation, and
eternal providence, self-revelation in the world and in history, is hardly
the task of religion at all, but rather pertains to our general
speculative instinct, which can only satisfy itself with the help of
imagination. Attempts of this kind have often been made. They are by no
means valueless, for even if no real knowledge can be gained by this
method, we may perhaps get an analogue of it which will help us to
understand existence and phenomena, and to define our position, as well as
to give at least provisional answers to many pressing questions (such, for
instance, as the problem of theodicy).

If we study the world unprejudiced by the naturalistic interpretation, or
having shaken ourselves free from it, we are most powerfully impressed by
one fundamental phenomenon in all existence: it is the fact of evolution.
It challenges attention and interpretation, and analogies quickly reveal
themselves which give something of the same trend to all such
interpretations. From stage to stage existence advances onwards, from the
world of large masses subject only to the laws of mechanics, to the
delicately complex play of the forces of development in growth and other
vital processes. The nature of the forces is revealed in ever higher
expression, and at the same time in ever more closely connected series of
stages. Even between the inorganic and the organic t