We must, therefore, once more insist upon the simple fact that science of religion abstains necessarily from assuming either that religion is true or is not true. What it does assume is what no one will deny, viz. that religion is a fact. Religious beliefs may be right or they may be wrong: but they exist. Therefore they can be studied, described, classified, placed in order of development, and treated as a branch of sociology and as one department of the evolution of the world. And all this can be done without once asking the question whether religious belief is true and right and good, or not. Whether it is pronounced true or false by you or me, will not in the least shake the fact that it has existed for thousands of years, that it has had a history during that period, and that that history may be written. We may have doubts whether the institution of private property is a good thing, or whether barter and exchange are desirable proceedings. But we shall not doubt that private property exists or that it may be exchanged. And we shall not imagine that the science of political economy, which deals, among other { 6} things with the production and exchange of wealth which is private property, makes any pronouncement whatever on the question whether private property is or is not an institution which we ought to support and believe in. The conclusions established by the science of political economy are set forth before the whole world; and men may use them for what purpose they will. They may and do draw very different inferences from them, even contradictory inferences. But if they do, it is because they use them for different ends or contradictory purposes. And the fact that the communist or socialist uses political economy to support his views no more proves that socialism is the logical consequence of political economy than the fact that the atheist uses or misuses, for his own purposes, the conclusions of the science of religion proves his inferences to be the logical outcome of the science.