Religion and the Sciences of Life: with other Essays on Allied Topics

Abstract

THERE is an orderliness, a vigour and a sense of conviction about everything which Prof. McDougall writes, which secure a ready attention from his readers and often actually influence one's opinion. This is the case with more than one topic treated of in the present volume. The author tells us that the first essay, which gives its title to the book, contains the thread of thought connecting the whole; it is necessary therefore to state that a little more fully than the rest. It is this. Whereas as a youth he was an ardent student of Darwin, Spencer and other ‘agnostic’ writers, in later life he has advanced to a more ‘religious’ position, coming to think that the ‘spiritual’ in man has an independent existence and value, and is capable in various measures of subjugating the material aspects of the world. This is the starting point; but he goes further and asserts that in these spiritual experiences man makes contact with a real and supremely important aspect of the universe, in which he shares, being influenced by it and in return contributing something.

Religion and the Sciences of Life: with other Essays on Allied Topics.

By William McDougall. Pp. xiv + 263. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1934.) 8s. 6d. net.