ure reason. I intend to take science and religion in their
present highly developed states as such, and show that on a systematic
examination of the latter by the methods of the former, the 'conflict'
between the two may be not merely 'reconciled' as regards the highest
generalities of each, but entirely abolished in all matters of detail
which can be regarded as of any great importance.

In any methodical enquiry the first object should be to ascertain the
fundamental principles with which the enquiry is concerned. In actual
research, however, it is by no means always the case that the enquirer
knows, or is able at first to ascertain what those principles are. In
fact, it is often only at the end of a research, that they are
discovered to be the fundamental principles. Such has been my own
experience with regard to the subject of the present enquiry. Although
all my thinking life has been concerned, off and on, in contemplating
the problem of our religious instincts, the sundry attempts which have
been made by mankind for securing their gratification, and the important
question as to their objective justification, it is only in advanced
years that I have clearly perceived wherein the first principles of such
a research must consist. And I doubt whether any one has hitherto
clearly defined this point. The principles in question are the nature of
causation and the nature of faith.

My objects then in this treatise are, mainly, three: 1st, to purify
agnosticism; 2nd, to consider more fully than heretofore, and from the
stand-point of pure agnosticism, the nature of natural causation, or,
more correctly, the relation of what we know on the subject of such
causation to the question of Theism; and, 3rd, again starting from the
same stand-point, to consider the religious consciousnesses of men as
phenomena of experience (i.e. as regarded by us from without), and
especially in their highest phase of development as exhibited in
Christianity.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] [I.e. supernatural but not strictly Divine Persons. Surely,
however, the proposition is not maintainable.--ED.]

[39] [This is another instance of recurrence to an earlier thought; see
Burney Essay, p. 25, and cf. _Mind and Motion and Monism_, p. 117, note
1.--ED.]

[40] _Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_, i. 308.

[41] [See further, p. 182.--ED.]

[42] [On the whole I have thought it best to omit the names.--ED.]

[43] [The MS. note here continues: 'Here