a
good thing, or whether barter and exchange are desirable proceedings.
But we shall not doubt that private property exists or that it may be
exchanged. And we shall not imagine that the science of political
economy, which deals, among other {6} things with the production and
exchange of wealth which is private property, makes any pronouncement
whatever on the question whether private property is or is not an
institution which we ought to support and believe in. The conclusions
established by the science of political economy are set forth before
the whole world; and men may use them for what purpose they will. They
may and do draw very different inferences from them, even contradictory
inferences. But if they do, it is because they use them for different
ends or contradictory purposes. And the fact that the communist or
socialist uses political economy to support his views no more proves
that socialism is the logical consequence of political economy than the
fact that the atheist uses or misuses, for his own purposes, the
conclusions of the science of religion proves his inferences to be the
logical outcome of the science.

The science of religion deals essentially with the one fact that
religion has existed and does exist. It is from that fact that the
missionary will start; and it is with men who do not question the fact
that he will have to do. The science of religion seeks to trace the
historic growth, the evolution of religion; to establish what actually
was, not to {7} judge what ought to have been,--science knows no
"ought," in that sense or rather in that tense, the past tense. Its
work is done, its last word has been said, when it has demonstrated
what was. It is the heart which sighs to think what might have been,
and which puts on it a higher value than it does on what actually came
to pass. There is then another order in which facts may be ranged
besides the chronological order in which historically they occurred;
and that is the order of their value. It is an order in which we do
range facts, whenever we criticise them. It is the order in which we
range them, whenever we pass judgment on them. Or, rather, passing
judgment on them is placing them in the order of their value. And the
chronological order of their occurrence is quite a different thing from
the order in which we rank them when we judge them according to their
value and importance. It is, or rather it would be, quite absurd to
say