Now it will be admitted that the special sciences take us some distance along the road towards an answer to such questions, inasmuch as the truths established by these sciences, and even the wider hypotheses conceived though not strictly verified in them, furnish us with most valuable data in our investigation of those questions. Similarly the alleged fact of a Divine Revelation cannot be ignored by any man desirous of using all the data available as helps towards their solution. The Revelation embodied in Christianity claims not merely to enlighten us in regard to many ultimate questions which mankind would be able to answer without its assistance, but also to tell us about our destiny some truths of supreme import, which of ourselves we should never have been able to discover. It is obvious, then, that whether a man has been brought up from his infancy to believe in the Christian Revelation or not, his whole outlook on life will be determined very largely by his belief or disbelief in its authenticity and its contents. Similarly, if he be a Confucian, or a Buddhist, or a Mohammedan, his outlook will be in part determined by what he believes of their teachings. Man’s conduct in life has undoubtedly many determining influences, but it will hardly be denied that among them the predominant influence is exerted by the views that he holds, the things he believes to be true, concerning his own origin, nature and destiny, as well as the origin, nature and destiny of the universe in which he finds himself. The Germans have an expressive term for that which, in the absence of a more appropriate term, we may translate as a man’s _world-outlook_; they call it his _Weltanschauung_. Now this world-outlook is formed by each individual for himself from his interpretation of _his experience as a whole_. It is not unusual to call this world-outlook a man’s _philosophy of life_. If we use the term _philosophy_ in this wide sense it obviously includes whatever light a man may gather from the _special sciences_, and whatever light he may gather from a divinely revealed _religion_ if he believes in such, as well as the light his own reason may shed upon a special and direct study of those ultimate questions themselves, to which we have just referred. But we mention this wide sense of the term _philosophy_ merely to put it aside; and to state that we use the term in the sense more commonly accepted nowadays, the sense in which it is understood to be distinct from the _special sciences_ on the one side and from _supernatural theology_ or the systematic study of divinely revealed religion on the other. Philosophy is distinct from the special sciences because while the latter seek the proximate, the former seeks the ultimate grounds, reasons and causes of all the facts of human experience. Philosophy is distinct from supernatural theology because while the former uses _the unaided power of human reason_ to study the ultimate questions