Where Science and Religion MeetPalmer, William Scott
Religion
Where Science and Religion Meet
Palmer, William Scott
Religion and science
Now, as a matter of fact, I am trying to communicate to you at this very
moment something that is mine. My knowledge (or my ignorant opinion) is
written down on the paper before you, and you will or may receive it—to
do with it what you choose. Henceforth it is, or may be, yours as well
as mine. Again, I try to communicate to you the content of my will for
you. You know and feel that I want your will to be brought to coincide
with mine, so that my will and yours shall be vitally identical in
regard to what I am writing about. In some degree or another you and I
may become one in this regard. I shall then have communicated my
knowledge (or my ignorant opinion) and my will to you and they will to
some extent or another be both yours and mine. This communication and
co-operation is a matter of our choosing to enter into it and be and
work together. We have it in our own hands. It is quite different from
the relation we have to each other as being parts in the universe, or
elements in God looked upon as the pantheist looks upon him, which makes
him no more than the universe. We can't help that relation. We share it
with the stones as well as with each other and with God. It is a purely
abstract business and belongs to 'the night in which all cows are
black.' Our cows, on the other hand, are of every sort of colour; and we
find, we actually do find, that we can pass on our colours to each
other, dye the different cow to our tinge and in turn be dyed. We are
concrete, not abstract; and our vital identity one with another is
concrete too. It may be and might not be. We choose whether it shall be
or not. And, happily, we choose that it shall be, up to a point, far
more often and more steadily than we choose that it shall not. Hence the
existence of a human community in common knowledge and reason and common
will—up to a point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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