But naturalism of this kind is by no means pure natural science; it consciously and deliberately oversteps in speculation the bounds of what is strictly scientific. In this respect it bears some resemblance to the nature-philosophy associated with what we called the first type of naturalism. But its very poverty enables it to have a strictly defined programme. It knows exactly what it wants, and thus it is possible to argue with it. The religious conception of the world must come 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 æsthetic, 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.”