ce.--Moral
ambiguity in pantheism.--Under stress, it becomes ascetic and requires a
mythology.--A supernatural world made by the Platonist out of
dialectic.--The Hebraic cry for redemption.--The two factors meet in
Christianity.--Consequent electicism.--The negation of naturalism never
complete.--Spontaneous values rehabilitated.--A witness out of
India.--Dignity of post-rational morality.--Absurdities nevertheless
involved.--The soul of positivism in all ideals.--Moribund dreams and
perennial realities. Pages 262-300

CHAPTER XI

THE VALIDITY OF SCIENCE

Various modes of revising science.--Science its own best
critic.--Obstruction by alien traditions.--Needless anxiety for moral
interests.--Science an imaginative and practical art.--Arriere-pensee in
transcendentalism.--Its romantic sincerity.--Its constructive
impotence.--Its dependence on common-sense.--Its futility.--Ideal
science is self-justified.--Physical science is presupposed in
scepticism.--It recurs in all understanding of perception.--Science
contains all trustworthy knowledge.--It suffices for the Life of Reason
Pages 301-320

REASON IN SCIENCE

CHAPTER I

TYPES AND AIMS OF SCIENCE

[Sidenote: Science still young.]

Science is so new a thing and so far from final, it seems to the layman
so hopelessly accurate and extensive, that a moralist may well feel some
diffidence in trying to estimate its achievements and promises at their
human worth. The morrow may bring some great revolution in science, and
is sure to bring many a correction and many a surprise. Religion and art
have had their day; indeed a part of the faith they usually inspire is
to believe that they have long ago revealed their secret. A critic may
safely form a judgment concerning them; for even if he dissents from the
orthodox opinion and ventures to hope that religion and art may assume
in the future forms far nobler and more rational than any they have
hitherto worn, still he must confess that art and religion have had
several turns at the wheel; they have run their course through in
various ages and climes with results which anybody is free to estimate
if he has an open mind and sufficient interest in the subject. Science,
on the contrary, which apparently cannot exist where intellectual
freedom is denied, has flourished only twice in recorded times: once
for some three hundred years in ancient Greece, and again for about the
same period in modern Christendom. I