Whatever then may be the evidence of conflict between science and religion, and whatever the difficulties lying in the way of working out reconciliation, there is clear warrant for claiming common ground from which to start, and that so ample and secure that it is provided by scientific inquiry itself, and generally accepted by educated men of all classes. There can be no patchwork contrivance, made up of what may be taken to be final statements of theological and scientific positions. We do not aim at some agglomeration of materials gathered from opposite quarters and brought together with the design of constructing a compact and durable unity. Neither from the side of religion, nor from that of science, could such a proposal find countenance. Each must work from its own basis, the one from Revelation, the other from Nature. Each must go on its own course of development and active service, unaided and undeterred by the other. And from age to age in the world's progress it must continue part of the task connected with intelligent existence, to go from one to the other, in search of the lines of harmony. From both sides must come an impulse to this search for agreement. From the scientific side, by an intellectual necessity, for all intelligent research presses on towards unity in a complete conquest of the region of investigation, pushing out in distinct lines with full conviction of the harmony of being, and of conclusions expressing so much of this harmony as has been definitely ascertained. And what is no less certain, though not so freely admitted, all investigation as to the laws of existence, even that which proclaims confidence only in observation, with inference from what it discloses, is urging the human mind onward to a higher range of questions as to existence beyond observation, and the causes of things visible. Impotent in the extreme has been the voice of a "positive" philosophy, denouncing the search for causes, sounding its trumpet call to rally all divisions of scientific workers to search exclusively for facts, as if such workers were but a band of quarrymen, boring, blasting, and gathering up shattered fragments of rock. For facts must science ever search; with nothing short of ascertained facts can it be satisfied; but, having found them, it must classify and harmonize, seeking for the laws which regulate their occurrence, and for the causes by which they may be rationally explained.