THE WORLD AND THE INDIVIDUAL
FIRST SERIES: THE FOUR HISTORICAL CONCEPTIONS OF BEING
LECTURE I
INTRODUCTION: THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS AND THE THEORY OF BEING
In the literature of Natural Religion at least three different conceptions of the subject are represented. The first of these conceptions regards Natural Religion as a search for what a well-known phrase has called “the way through Nature to God.” If we accept this conception, we begin by recognizing both the existence of the physical world and the validity of the ordinary methods and conceptions of the special sciences of nature. We undertake to investigate what light, if any, the broader generalizations of natural science, when once accepted as statements about external reality, throw upon the problems of religion. It belongs, for instance, to this sort of inquiry to ask: What countenance does the present state of science give to the traditional argument from Design?
The second of our three conceptions views Religion less as a doctrine to be proved or disproved through a study of the external world than as a kind of consciousness whose justification lies in its rank amongst the
