It has indeed often been affirmed that religion may, without anxiety about itself, leave scientific knowledge of the world to go its own way. The secret reservation in this position is always the belief that scientific knowledge will never in any case reach the real depth and meaning of things. Perhaps this is true. But the assumption itself would remain, and would have to be justified. And if religion had no other interest in general world-theory, it would still have this pre-eminent one, that, by defining the limitations of scientific theory, and showing that they can never be transcended, it thus indicates for itself a position beyond them in which it can dwell securely. In reality religion has never ceased to turn its never-resting, often anxious gaze towards the progress, the changes, the secure results and tentative theories in the domain of general world-science, and again and again it has been forced to come to a new adjustment with them.
One great centre of interest, though by no means the only or even the chief one, lies in the special field of world-lore and theoretical interpretation comprised in the natural sciences. And in the following pages we shall make this our special interest, and shall endeavour to inquire whether our modern natural science consists with the “minimal requirements” of the religious point of view, with which we shall make closer acquaintance later; or whether it is at all capable of being brought into friendly relations with that point of view.
Such a study need not necessarily be “apologetic,” that is to say, defensive, but may be simply an examination. For in truth the real results of investigation are not now and never were “aggressive,” but are in themselves neutral towards not only religious but all idealistic conceptions, and leave it, so to speak, to the higher methods of study to decide how the material supplied is to be taken up into their different departments, and brought under their particular points of view. Our undertaking only becomes defensive and critical because, not from caprice or godlessness, but, as we shall see, from an inherent necessity, the natural sciences, in association with other convictions and aims, tend readily to unite into a distinctive and independent system of world-interpretation, which, if it were valid and sufficient, would drive the religious view into difficulties, or make it impossible. This independent system is Naturalism, and against its attacks the religious conception of the world has to stand on the defensive.