Mr. Herbert Spencer has well said, in the opening section of his Synthetic Philosophy, that wherever human thought appears to be radically divided, [there must be truth on both sides and that the] ‘reconciliation’ of opposing views is to be found by emphasizing that ultimate element of truth which on each side underlies manifold differences.  More than is generally supposed depends on points of view, especially where first principles of a subject are in dispute.  Opposite sides of the same shield may present wholly different aspects[46].  Spencer alludes to this with special reference to the conflict between science and religion; and it is in this same connexion that I also allude to it.  For it seems to me, after many years of thought upon the subject, that the ‘reconciliation’ admits of being carried much further than it has been by him.  For he effects this reconciliation only to the extent of showing that religion arises from the recognition of fundamental mystery—­which it may be proved that science also recognizes in all her fundamental ideas.  This, however, is after all little more than a platitude.  That our ultimate scientific ideas (i.e. ultimate grounds of experience) are inexplicable, is a proposition which is self-evident since the dawn of human thought.  My aim is to carry the ‘reconciliation’ into much more detail and yet without quitting the grounds of pure reason.  I intend to take science and religion in their present highly developed states as such, and show that on a systematic examination of the latter by the methods of the former, the ‘conflict’ between the two may be not merely ‘reconciled’ as regards the highest generalities of each, but entirely abolished in all matters of detail which can be regarded as of any great importance.

In any methodical enquiry the first object should be to ascertain the fundamental principles with which the enquiry is concerned.  In actual research, however, it is by no means always the case that the enquirer knows, or is able at first to ascertain what those principles are.  In fact, it is often only at the end of a research, that they are discovered to be the fundamental principles.  Such has been my own experience with regard to the subject of the present enquiry.  Although all my thinking life has been concerned, off and on, in contemplating the problem of our religious instincts, the sundry attempts which have been made by mankind for securing their gratification, and the important question as to their objective justification, it is only in advanced years that I have clearly perceived wherein the first principles of such a research must consist.  And I doubt whether any one has hitherto clearly defined this point.  The principles in question are the nature of causation and the nature of faith.

My objects then in this treatise are, mainly, three:  1st, to purify agnosticism; 2nd, to consider more fully than heretofore, and from the stand-point of pure agnosticism, the nature of natural causation, or, more correctly, the relation of what we know on the subject of such causation to the question of Theism; and, 3rd, again starting from the same stand-point, to consider the religious consciousnesses of men as phenomena of experience (i.e. as regarded by us from without), and especially in their highest phase of development as exhibited in Christianity.