Religion in its unspoiled form is always other-worldly and disenchanted. Puritanism, romanticism and evolutionary optimism are really but reflections and refractions of the general temper of Western life, which has slowly gained the ascendancy over the religious spirit. It is a temper of friendliness to, or at least fearlessness before the world. In puritanism the tension between religion and life is maintained, but the soul is persuaded that it can bring the whole of life under the dominion of conscience. In romanticism there is a frank identification of human virtue with a sentimentally idealized natural world. Religious and ethical thought which has come under the influence of evolutionary optimism maintains a sense of tension between the soul and the natural world in rare instances; more frequently it regards human history as but the last chapter in the beautiful story of progress which all life has unfolded and which time and patience will inevitably bring to a happy issue. The foundation for the Western strategy of life was laid by the Greeks who, overcoming the awe and reverence with which the Oriental brooded over nature’s mysteries, thrust impious hands into her secrets and made shrewd guesses about her varied phenomena. The Greeks learned to make only slight practical application of their knowledge, and the rise of Christianity eclipsed their scientific temper. It came into its own again at the close of the Middle Ages and at the dawn of the modern era. The fact that science developed in the West rather than the East is due to this attitude toward the natural world. The Orient is not less curious than the Occident, but it directs its mind to other problems. While it cradles philosophies and religions the West gives birth to science.