cal task of the age that is coming will
consist in living out in detail the ideas to which he has given
expression.

I contend, then, not merely for a larger charity, but for a truer view
of the facts of history than is evinced by those who set aside the poets
and philosophers as mere dreamers, and conceive that the sciences alone
occupy the region of valid thought in all its extent. There is a
universal brotherhood of which all who think are members. Not only do
they all contribute to man's victory over his environment and himself,
but they contribute in a manner which is substantially the same. There
are many points of superficial distinction between the processes of
philosophy and science, and between both and the method of poetry; but
the inner movement, if one may so express it, is identical in all. It is
time to have done with the notion that philosophers occupy a
transcendent region beyond experience, or spin spiritual cocoons by _a
priori_ methods, and with the view that scientific men are mere
empirics, building their structures from below by an _a posteriori_ way
of thought, without the help of any ruling conceptions. All alike
endeavour to interpret experience, but none of them get their principles
from it.

"But, friends,
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe."

There is room and need for the higher synthesis of philosophy and
poetry, as well as for the more palpable and, at the same time, more
narrow colligating conceptions of the systematic sciences. The
quantitative relations between material objects, which are investigated
by mathematics and physics, do not exhaust the realm of the knowable, so
as to leave no place for the poet's, or the philosopher's view of the
world. The scientific investigator who, like Mr. Tyndall, so far forgets
the limitations of his province as to use his natural data as premises
for religious or irreligious conclusions, is as illogical as the popular
preacher, who attacks scientific conclusions because they are not
consistent with his theological presuppositions. Looking only at their
primary aspects, we cannot say that religious presuppositions and the
scientific interpretation of facts are either consistent or
inconsistent: they are simply different. Their harmony or discord can
come only when the higher principles of philosophy have been fully
developed, and when the departmental ideas of t