Religion looks at existence as a whole, and attempts to determine its meaning and value for mankind. Religion, we may say, stands at the centre of existence, and regards reality from a central position. The province of science, on the other hand, is not to take so wide a survey, but to gain knowledge piece-meal: to locate points inductively, and thus to plot out the curve which we believe existence constitutes. If the _loci_, as they are successively fixed, seem to indicate that the curve is identical with the circle which religion has already intuitively postulated, the problem of existence would have been solved. Science and religion working by different methods would have described the same circle. When science has completed its circle, its centre may be found to stand just at the point where religion has always confidently declared it to be. Knowledge and faith will then, and not till then, be one. CHAPTER II THE DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD SYNTHESIS We have seen that there are classic religious periods when faith and knowledge have seemed to approximate to one another. The Middle Ages in Europe constituted such a period; no "Religion _v._ Science" controversy could then be said to exist; the best scientific knowledge of the time seemed to sanction the popular religious notions. Learned and lay thought in the same terms; the wolf lay down with the lamb. THE OLD WORLD-SCHEME.--It is important to grasp the main features of a world-scheme which as late as the fifteenth century passed everywhere without criticism. The father of it was Aristotle. His conception of the universe rested upon the plain contrast, which strikes the unsophisticated observer, between the unembarrassed and regular movements of the heavenly bodies and the disordered agitations of sublunary things. Hence the heavenly region was eternal, and the region of earth transitory: yonder, the motions that take place are eternal and regular; here, motion and rest alternate, nothing "continueth in one stay." At the centre of the universe stands Earth: hence we mount through three sublunary strata to the region of the celestial ether, which is purer as distance from the Earth increases. These strata form three concentric "spheres" which, solid yet transparent (like crystal), revolve around the earth. The first contains the moon--like a fly in amber; the second, the sun; the third, the fixed stars; which last sphere is also the first of several successive heavens, the highest of which is the seat of Deity.