XV
SYMBOLS
The present time is an era when intellectual persons are ashamed of
being credulous. It is the perfectly natural and desirable result
of the working of the scientific spirit. Everything is relentlessly
investigated, the enormous structure of natural law is being
discovered to underlie all the most surprising, delicate, and
apparently fortuitous processes, and no one can venture to forecast
where the systematisation will end. The result is a great inrush of
bracing and invigorating candour. It is not that our liberty of
reflection and action is increased. It is rather increasingly
limited. But at least we are growing to discern where our
boundaries are, and it is deeply refreshing to find that the
boundaries erected by humanity are much closer and more cramping
than the boundaries determined by God. We are no longer bound by
human authority, by subjective theories, by petty tradition. We are
no longer required to tremble before thaumaturgy and conjuring and
occultism. It is true that science has hitherto confined itself
mainly to the investigation of concrete phenomena; but the same
process is sure to be applied to metaphysics, to sociology, to
psychology; and the day will assuredly come when the human race
will analyse the laws which govern progress, which regulate the
exact development of religion and morality.
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