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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

exclusive in common experience. However, none of our methods is based on pure perception, hence the inability of the latter to know Reality does not affect the former.

II. Inference. This is another way of deriving knowledge of the world. But inference itself is based on experience,—on perception,—be it deductive or inductive. In our experience we find fire wherever there is smoke; hence if we see smoke on any occasion, we infer there is fire. This is deductive inference. But it is possible only because of our previous experience (perception) of smoke as being associated with fire. In inductive inference, also, there is the same dependence on perception. We observe that a certain kind of bacillus is the cause of cholera. We find out the causal connection between that kind of bacillus and cholera and at once inductively infer that wherever we find this bacillus, cholera will be present. While there is a leap here from the known