Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/155

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But now we come to the last and closest question: Is this impression of pantheism really warranted? And here we stand in need of sharp discrimination: there is a way of looking at the course of science, the way we have just been examining, that seems to find the warrant asked for; and there is an exacter way which will show that the supposed warrant is only an illusion. With the right discrimination, and using the exacter way, we shall find that the inference to pantheism from the method and principles of science, decided as it seems to be, is after all illegitimate.

Our first precaution in this home-stretch of our inquiry must be to remember that it is not science — not exact and rigorous knowledge — in its entire compass that is involved in our question. It is only “modern science,” popularly so called; that is, science taken to mean only the science of Nature. Not only so, but science is in the new context further restricted to signify only what may rightly be described as the natural science of Nature — so much of the possible knowledge of Nature as can be reached through the channel of the senses critically used; so much, in short, as will yield itself to a method strictly empirical. Hence the real question is. Whether