ng how they came there, or what natural law could account for
their lying in that position; and the physical antecedents of the
fact--the geological history of the stones and the physiological
structure of the men who moved them--give no answer. As soon,
however, as we hear that men placed them so, to guide wayfarers in
the mist or in the night, our minds are satisfied.

Dr. Temple holds fast to that great word that infallible clue, Purpose.
He is not arguing from design. He keeps his feet firmly on scientific
ground, and asks, as a man of science asks, What is this? and Why is
this? Then he finds that this question can proceed only from faith in
coherence, and discovers that the quest of science is quest of Purpose.

To investigate Purpose is obviously to acknowledge Will.

Science requires, therefore, that there should be a real Purpose in
the world. . . . It appears from the investigation of science, from
investigation of the method of scientific procedure itself, that
there must be a Will in which the whole world is rooted and
grounded; and that we and all other things proceed therefrom;
because only so is there even a hope of attaining the intellectual
satisfaction for which science is a quest.

Reason is obliged to confess the hypothesis of a Creative Will, although
it does not admit that man has in any way perceived it. But is this
hypothesis, which is essential to science, to be left in the position of
Mahomet's coffin? Is it not to be investigated? For if atheism is
irrational, agnosticism is not scientific--"it is precisely a refusal to
apply the scientific method itself beyond a certain point, and that a
point at which there is no reason in heaven or earth to stop."

To speak about an immanent purpose is very good sense; but to speak
about a purpose behind which there is no Will is nonsense.

People, he says, become so much occupied with the consideration of what
they know that they entirely forget "the perfectly astounding fact that
they know it." Also they overlook or slur the tremendous fact of
spiritual individuality; "because I am I, I am not anybody else." But
let the individual address to himself the question he puts to the
universe, let him investigate his own pressing sense of spiritual
individuality, just as he investigates any other natural phenomenon, and
he will find himself applying that principle of Purpose, and thinking