Again, between the conviction that everything has a cause, and ability to assign the cause of everything that happens, there is a great distance. Man started in the beginning with the former, and is yet a long way off the latter. So far as he has bridged the gap, he has done so simply by closer and closer attention to the facts of consciousness. Even the destruction of erroneous canons of reasoning, e.g. like produces like, has been effected simply by the process of verification.

But the conviction with which man started was neither the result of any process of reasoning (no satisfactory reasoning has even yet been found for its proof) nor could it have been the result of experience, in the beginning when man had as yet had no experience. It was a conviction, undemonstrated and unproved, if not incapable of proof, yet one without which science could have made not only no progress, but not even a beginning.

So, too, the conviction that changes not caused by man are yet due to will, was a similar form of thought, a mode in which man could not help thinking, and without which religion could have made no progress.

But just as the conviction that everything has a cause does not help us to determine whether A, B, or C is the cause of Z, and does not prevent us from selecting A, B, C, or D as the cause when it really is K, so the conviction that changes not caused by man are due to will did not enable man to identify the Being whose will it was, nor prevent him from ascribing that will to many erroneous

sources.

That man should in the beginning make many mistakes, needs no explanation. But it would be an error to suppose that his mistaken inferences were automatically corrected by their discrepancy with actual facts. Scientific knowledge is the possession even now of but few: the vast majority have not learnt to correct their inferences or verify their conclusions by comparing them with facts. Even when facts force themselves on their notice, they are disregarded: we note and remember those which confirm our preconceived opinions, and set aside the rest. The same is true of religion. In fine, it is neither the origin nor the growth nor the survival

of error that need surprise us (for error has its laws of growth and propagation), but that truth should ever supplant it.

After that, the convinThe preconceptions, the

Now, it is possible to look at a thing without seeing ite.g. to look at a rock without seeing its resemblance to a human face or figure. And when once the thing has been pointed out by somebody else, it is impossible to look at it without seeing it. This is as true of spiritual and mental vision as it is of physical sight. The one thing needful for the spread and propagation of the true view is that there should be someone to point it out. cing power of facts should suffice. wrong way of looking at the facts, the overlooking of them, stand in the way and require to be removed by the assistance of someone who sees what he wishes you to see. That it is God with whom the religious heart communes in prayer, is a fact of immediate consciousness-which is none the less a fact because another looks at it without seeing it, or is as unable to distinguish it from some other fact of consciousness, as he may be to distinguish dark purple from black, the personal ambition which really moves him from the patriotism which stirs him in part though not as completely as he thinks.

That a man who sees the fact is able to assist others to concentrate their attention until they also see it, is undoubted-it is the only means of spreading any teaching, scientific, æsthetic, or religious. It is the condition of the growth of a belief. Is it not the condition or a condition of the origin also? What the reformer first sees in his own mind and heart he sees in consequence of his communing with God and of His teaching. Be this as it may, the mode of propagation is that the learner learns to see facts which he did not see before: ex hypothesi at first he cannot see them, but he believes that he may come to have immediate consciousness of them, and he so believes because he has faith in his master. The reason he cannot see them is that preconceptions block his view or direct it amiss. These preconceptions, ex hypothesi, are erroneous conclusions reached by a reasoning process, or simple want of teaching how to use the eye of the mind and direct it to the proper quarter, To lay aside or cast off these preconceptions means

giving up belief in them, admitting that they are wrong; and such an admission is only possible to the humble-minded: humility is the first condition of learning. The man who thinks he knows has no desire to learn; the man who is sure he is right cannot set about amending his ways.

The period of faith does not terminate, however, when the pupil has come to have immediate consciousness of the facts which at first he could not see: the new facts of consciousness have to be reconciled with other (real or apparent) facts, e.g. the all-powerfulness with the all-goodness of God, and such reconciliation may be beyond the reasoning power of the individual or of man; but faith persists that the belief will ultimately be found to be justified by the facts. Here note that faith is not something peculiar or confined to religion, but is interwoven with every act of reason, no matter what the subject matter to which the reasoning process is applied. The object of reason is to infer facts. The facts of which we have immediate consciousness at any moment are relatively very few. But the reasoning processes enable us to judge what certain facts will be, which at the moment are not immediately present to consciousness. The only reason why we believe that any given process will enable us to anticipate correctly the movement of facts, is that in the past it has so enabled us, and was verified by the facts. Here we evidently assume that facts will in the future continue to move on the same lines as in the past, and not swerve off in some totally different direction-in a word, we assume that nature is uniform. Now this belief that

facts will behave in the future as in the past, that fire, e.g., will not cease to burn, is a piece of pure faith. The difference between this faith and religious faith is that no great effort of will is required for it-the reason of which is that facts apparently irreconcilable with it are not of frequent occurrence. The moment such facts are alleged, e.g. as in the case of the way in which material objects are alleged to behave at spiritualistic séances, an effort of will to maintain the faith in the uniformity of nature is stimulated, which in the case supposed takes the form sometimes of angry denunciations of the folly of human nature, or confident assertions that the alleged facts will be found on closer inspection to be no facts

at all. In the case of religious faith, the apparently irreconcilable facts are of more frequent occurrence, e.g. the difficulty of reconciling much that happens in the world with the faith that all that happens is for the best. Such difficulties require an act of will, if faith is to reassert itself; and the energy thus stimulated may expend itself in renewed efforts to harmonise the apparently conflicting facts. The desire to unify our experience is a perennial need of human nature. The faith that it can be unified is not peculiar to religion, but is the base of all science. The track by which science has marched in its conquest of nature is marked by the ruins of abandoned hypotheses. One hypothesis is cast aside in favour of another which explains a greater number of facts; and though no hypothesis, not even evolution, accounts for all the facts of the physical universe (i.e. for all the external facts of consciousness), yet no man of science believes that the facts are incapable of explanation: on the contrary, he believes that they are only waiting for the right hypothesis, and that then they will all fall into line. In a word, as a man of science, in his scientific labours he walks by faithby the faith that the universe is constructed on rational principles, on principles the rationality of which the human, or at anyrate the scientific, mind can comprehend. His faith is that the external facts of consciousness do form one consistent, harmonious whole, regulated by the laws of nature, and that we can more or less comprehend the system which the physical universe forms. The moral philosopher holds the same faith with regard to the facts of morality, that they too are consistent with one another and are all consistent with reason and with the moral aspirations of man rightly construed. The religious mind believes that these facts, all facts, external or internal, of which we have immediate consciousness, can be reconciled with one another, or rather actually are harmonious and consistent, if only we could see them as they are, instead of looking at them without seeing them. But this, the religious, faith which looks forward to the synthesis of all facts in a manner satisfying to the reason, to the moral and to the spiritual sense alike, covers a much larger area than either science or moral philosophy, and is much more liable to meet with facts apparently irreconcilable with it.

Hence the effort of will is a much more frequent and more marked feature of religious than of scientific faith.

Scientific investigations made by means of the microscope or telescope entail a considerable expenditure of will-power and a considerable exercise of scientific faith-of faith that the results will be worth the labour, and of will-power in the concentration of attention for long hours on what is presented to the eye. The attitude of the religious mind differs from that of the scientific, in that it is one not of critical observation but of trustful waiting and watching, and its faith is in a personal God, and not in natural laws conceived as working mechanically. But the religious mind equally with the scientific is engaged in the contemplation of facts of immediate consciousness, and as great concentration of attention is required in the one case as in the other. And once more it is only by an appeal to the facts of consciousness that the truth of any statement or of any process of reasoning can be demonstrated. But to observe with the exactitude which science requires is an art not acquired in a day: what the microscope presents to the eye of the trained observer is something very different from what is seen when the microscope is used for the first time. For one thing, the trained microscopist knows how to use his instrument, but, what is more important, he knows how to use his eye-a knowledge which is only obtained by habitual concentration of the attention upon what is presented to the eye. The fact that the untrained observer does not see something is no proof that the thing is not there to be seen. This consideration may serve to illustrate the proposition that though the same facts are present in the spiritual consciousness of all men, they are not equally discerned by all. Thus there is an à priori reason why the historian of religion should assume that man being man began with a spiritual consciousness of the same content as now. There is no reason why he should assume that man began by realising all that was contained in that consciousness. In this respect the "external consciousness" is the counterpart of the internal: the laws which science has discovered to pervade the facts of the physical universe, of external consciousness, were at work when man first appeared, but man was not then aware of them. But