if we consider, not the efflorescences and artificial
products of religion, but religion itself, it is certain that there is,
and always must be, around it a borderland and fringe of religious
world-theory, with which it is not indeed identical, but without which it
is inconceivable; that is, a series of definite and characteristic
convictions relating to the world and its existence, its meaning, its
"whence" and "whither"; to man and his intelligence, his place and
function in the world, his peculiar dignity, and his destiny; to time and
space, to infinity and eternity, and to the depth and mystery of Being in
general.

These convictions and their fundamental implications can be defined quite
clearly, both singly and as a whole, and later we shall attempt so to
define them. And it is of the greatest importance to religion that these
presuppositions and postulates should have their legitimacy and validity
vindicated. For they are at once the fundamental and the minimal
postulates which religion must make in its outlook on the world, which it
must make if it is to exist at all. And they are so constituted that, even
when they are released from their primitive and naive form and
association, and permitted speculative development and freedom, they must,
nevertheless, just because they contain a theory of the world, be brought
into comparison, contact, or relation of some kind, whether hostile or
friendly, with other world-conceptions of different origin. This relation
will be hostile or friendly according to the form these other conceptions
have taken. It is impossible to imagine any religious view of the world
whose network of conceptions can have meshes so wide, or constituents so
elastic and easily adjustable, that it will allow every theoretical
conception of nature and the world to pass through it without violence or
friction, offering to none either let or hindrance.

It has indeed often been affirmed that religion may, without anxiety about
itself, leave scientific knowledge of the world to go its own way. The
secret reservation in this position is always the belief that scientific
knowledge will never in any case reach the real depth and meaning of
things. Perhaps this is true. But the assumption itself would remain, and
would have to be justified. And if religion had no other interest in
general world-theory, it would still have this pre-eminent one, that, by
defining the limitations of scientific theory, and show