------------------------------------------------------------------------ WHERE SCIENCE AND RELIGION MEET WHERE SCIENCE AND RELIGION MEET BY WILLIAM SCOTT PALMER "Il paraît juste de voir dans la vie le trait d'union de la science et de la religion." _Émile Boutroux._ HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 'We are still, as in Plato's age, groping about for a new method more comprehensive than any of those that now prevail; and also more permanent. And we seem to see at a distance the promise of such a method, which can hardly be any other than the method of idealized experience, having roots which strike far down into the history of philosophy. It is a method which does not divorce the present from the past, or the part from the whole, or the abstract from the concrete, or theory from fact, or the divine from the human, or one science from another, but labours to connect them. Along such a road we have proceeded a few steps, sufficient, perhaps, to make us reflect on the want of method which prevails in our own day. In another age, all the branches of knowledge, whether relating to God or man or nature, will become the knowledge of "the revelation of a single science," and all things, like the stars in heaven, will shed their light upon one another.' JOWETT: _Plato_, Introduction to _Meno_. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NOTE I have not named my authorities or given references to any passages in their books. My critics, friendly or unfriendly, may complain of this omission. But I hope they will not. I hope they will see that I have gathered my materials together for a clearly shown purpose with which particular references and frequent defined quotations would have interfered. I wanted to build a wayside cottage for travellers who are in haste and will soon pass on, not a museum for the leisurely student. I hope, then, that my critics will criticize the cottage to their hearts' content—I shall do my best to learn from them,—but I beg them not to treat it as a museum whose curator has either not had the sense or not taken the trouble to ticket its contents.