Explore "At large" by A.C. Benson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The present time is an era when intellectual persons are ashamed of being credulous. It is the perfectly natural and desirable result of the working of the scientific spirit. Everything is relentlessly investigated, the enormous structure of natural law is being discovered to underlie all the most surprising, delicate, and apparently fortuitous processes, and no one can venture to forecast where the systematisation will end. The result is a great inrush of bracing and invigorating candour. It is not that our liberty of reflection and action is increased. It is rather increasingly limited. But at least we are growing to discern where our boundaries are, and it is deeply refreshing to find that the boundaries erected by humanity are much closer and more cramping than the boundaries determined by God. We are no longer bound by human authority, by subjective theories, by petty tradition. We are no longer required to tremble before thaumaturgy and conjuring and occultism.
It is true that science has hitherto confined itself mainly to the investigation of concrete phenomena; but the same process is sure to be applied to metaphysics, to sociology, to psychology; and the day will assuredly come when the human race will analyse the laws which govern progress, which regulate the exact development of religion and morality.