In enlisting the aid of reason in our quest for freedom, we shall be
following in the footsteps of mathematicians and theoretical
physicists. In their arduous and unflinching search after truth they
have attained to a conception of the background of phenomena of far
greater breadth and grandeur than that of the average religionist of
to-day. As a mathematician once remarked to a neo-theosophist,
"Your idea of the ether is a more material one than the materialist's
own." Science has, however, imposed upon itself its own limitations,
and in this connection these should be clearly understood.
Science is that knowledge which can be gained by exact observation
and correct thinking. If science makes use of any methods but these
it ceases to be itself. Science has therefore nothing to do with
morals: it gives the suicide his pistol, the surgeon his life-saving
lance, but neither admonishes nor judges them. It has nothing to do
with emotion: it exposes the chemistry of a tear, the mechanism of
laughter; but of sorrow and happiness it has naught to say. It has
nothing to do with beauty: it traces the movements of the stars, and
tells of their constitution; but the fact of their singing together,
and that "such harmony is in immortal souls," it leaves to poet and
philosopher. The timbre, loudness, pitch, of musical tones, is a
concern of science; but for this a Beethoven symphony is no better
than the latest ragtime air from the music halls. In brief, science
deals only with _phenomena_, and its gift to man is power over his
material environment.