ome to an
understanding with it, for it is quite obvious that the more indifferent
this naturalism is to everything outside of itself, and the less
aggressive it pretends to be, the more does the picture of the world which
it attempts to draw exert a cramping influence on religion. Where the two
come into contact we shall endeavour to make clear in the following pages.

CHAPTER III. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES.

The fundamental convictions of naturalism, its general tendencies, and the
points of view which determine its outlook, are primarily related to that
order of facts which forms the subject of the natural sciences, to
"Nature." It is only secondarily that it attempts to penetrate with the
methods of the natural sciences into the region of the conscious, of the
mind, into the domain that underlies the mental sciences, including
history and the aesthetic, political, and religious sciences, and to show
that, in this region as in the other, natural law and the same principles
of interpretation obtain, that here, too, the "materialistic conception of
history holds true, and that there is no autonomy of mind."

The interests of religion here go hand in hand with those of the mental
sciences, in so far as these claim to be distinct and independent. For the
question is altogether one of the reality, pre-eminence, and independence
of the spiritual as opposed to the "natural." Occasionally it has been
thought that the whole problem of the relations between religion and
naturalism was concentrated on this point, and the study of nature has
been left to naturalism as if it were indifferent or even hopeless, thus
leaving a free field for theories of all kinds, the materialistic
included. It is only in regard to the Darwinian theory of evolution and
the mechanical theory of the origin and nature of life, and particularly
in regard to the relatively unimportant question of "spontaneous
generation" that a livelier interest is usually awakened. But these
isolated theories are only a part of the "reduction," which is
characteristic of naturalism, and they can only be rightly estimated and
understood in connection with it. We shall turn our attention to them only
after we have carefully considered what is fundamental and essential. But
the idea that religion may calmly neglect the study of nature as long as
naturalism leaves breathing-room for the freedom and independence of mind
is quite erroneous. If religion is true, nature