aces in religious doctrines, to be
viewed as absolute rules of conduct coming from outside of nature, and not
from nature itself, in the way the earlier sections of this chapter have
shown.

Let us now summarize the results of the foregoing brief survey, conducted
by the identical methods employed for the analysis of other bodies of
fact. We have sought for those characteristics which are common to all
religions of whatever time and place and race. Combined with many
secondary and adventitious elements of other fields of thought and action,
such as social, political, ethical, and psychological factors, they have
proved to be the three essential beliefs in God or gods, human
responsibility, and immortality. As a veritable backbone, they underlie
and support the whole body of religious doctrine and organs of thought
formed about them. We have seen, furthermore, that a natural explanation
of the way these elements have originated can be discovered by the
comparative student of religion, who describes also how they have
variously evolved among different peoples. In all of this we have not
questioned at any time the validity or reality of any one of these
concepts; to ask whether or not they correspond actually to the truth is
beyond our purpose, which is simply and solely to inquire whether even
these mental conceptions furnish evidence of their evolution in the course
of time. I believe that such evidence is found, and I believe also that
this discovery must be of the greatest importance to everyone in
formulating a system of religious belief, but the construction of this is
not the task of science as such. Every individual must work out his own
relation to the world on the basis of knowledge as complete as he can make
it, but every individual must accomplish this end for himself. Because no
two men can be exactly alike in temperament, intellect, and social
situation, it is impossible for entire agreement in religious faith to
exist. One's outlook upon the whole universe is and must be an individual
matter; science and evolution are of overwhelming value, not by directing
the mind to adopt this or that attitude toward the unseen, but by
providing the seeker after the truth with definite knowledge about the
things of the world, so that his position may be taken on the sound basis
of reasonable and common-sensible principles.

* * * * *

When we take up science and philosophy, or knowledge as