Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/311

286 is very right in appealing to experience with wholly different aims, namely, for the sake of understanding the laws of the sequence of phenomena, to the end that we may be able to know what the world-plan, however it may be formed, does actually render us capable of accomplishing just now and here in our concrete dealings with things. And if science, in doing all this, has to make certain postulates, and to accept them on faith, then such faith, though it needs indeed a deeper foundation, is at least not identical with the presumption that, undertaking not simply to postulate, but to prove beyond doubt, pretends to discover with certainty, from bare experience, that the world-maker’s plans do agree with our plans. After all, such empirical Theism is assuming its safest and most characteristic form when it appears no longer as a genuine investigator, but poses as the defendant’s attorney, takes prudent refuge behind the rules of debate, and demands that other people shall assume the burden of proof, and either show it to be certainly false, or else accept it for the sake of propriety.

We turned to the supposed external World of Powers, and we have found it either dumb, or else given to dark and doubtful speeches. The Powers may indeed be somehow of the highest worth. But to us, even if we accept unquestioningiy the supposed external world, the worth of it all seems doubtful, and more so the longer we study the matter. The partial evil may be universal good; but we could not