aturalism and
Supernaturalism have consciously, or unconsciously, competed and
struggled with one another; and the varying fortunes of the contest
are written in the records of the course of civilisation, from those
of Egypt and Babylonia, six thousand years ago, down to those of our
own time and people.

These records inform us that, so far as men have paid attention to
Nature, they have been rewarded for their pains. They have developed
the Arts which have furnished the conditions of civilised existence;
and the Sciences, which have been a progressive revelation of reality
and have afforded the best discipline of the mind in the methods of
discovering truth. They have accumulated a vast body of universally
accepted knowledge; and the conceptions of man and of society, of
morals and of law, based upon that knowledge, are every day more and
more, either openly or tacitly, acknowledged to be the foundations of
right action.

History also tells us that the field of the supernatural has rewarded
its cultivators with a harvest, perhaps not less luxuriant, but of a
different character. It has produced an almost infinite diversity of
Religions. These, if we set aside the ethical concomitants upon which
natural knowledge also has a claim, are composed of information about
Supernature; they tell us of the attributes of supernatural beings, of
their relations with Nature, and of the operations by which their
interference with the ordinary course of events can be secured or
averted. It does not appear, however, that supernaturalists have
attained to any agreement about these matters, or that history
indicates a widening of the influence of supernaturalism on practice,
with the onward flow of time. On the contrary, the various religions
are, to a great extent, mutually exclusive; and their adherents
delight in charging each other, not merely with error, but with
criminality, deserving and ensuing punishment of infinite severity. In
singular contrast with natural knowledge, again, the acquaintance of
mankind with the supernatural appears the more extensive and the more
exact, and the influence of supernatural doctrines upon conduct the
greater, the further back we go in time and the lower the stage of
civilisation submitted to investigation. Historically, indeed, there
would seem to be an inverse relation between supernatural and natural
knowledge. As the latter has widened, gained in precision and in
trustworthiness, so has the